RICE-WN sets up a Nursery bed for Avutukulafe PLHIV group in Tara Sub County, Maracha District

Post date: Nov 19, 2013 2:39:1 PM

Like most empowerment oriented Organizations, RICE-WN does much of its community development work through groups. The reason being working through groups enables empowerment of more community members hence the likelihood of a bigger impact and sustainability once the project or support provided is long gone.

Avutukulafe group is one of those that the Organization has been working with since 2007. It consists of 30 members. All members share a high level of commitment towards its growth to achieve among others economic empowerment that will improve their standard of living. Given the fact that the group is composed of PLHIV, good feeding is a concern expressed by many so as to stay healthy and free of opportunistic infections. Following a planning meeting held at Tara Sub County offices with the group and some sub county officials, one of their needs that ranked highly in their work plan for 2013 was accessing seeds for crops that included Tomatoes, Green Paper and Sorghum. However, the group agreed to start with Tomatoes and Green paper which seeds were purchased for them by RICE-WN.

On a piece of land offered by one of the members as a demonstration site, nursery beds for tomato and green paper seedlings were set. Seedlings are to be equally distributed among the members during time for transplantation into individual household gardens. The group was also advised to consider maintaining a communally owned garden whose proceeds would go into the group’s account. The members all seemed excited with great anticipation for good yields at the end of the day. Jaceng who is the group chairperson had this to say, “It has been a while since we got this kind of support RICE-WN has offered us, I will make sure that the whole group actively participates to make the project a success. Our hope is that RICE shouldn’t abandon us but strengthen this partnership further.” The rest aof the members also expressed their gratitude towards RICE-WN for the support and promised to be very cooperative and hardworking to ensure that the project started becomes sustainable.

The activity was spear headed by Community Health department of RICE-WN, however the expertise of the Agric Extension workers in the department of Sustainable Agriculture came in handy both during the planning and actual set up of the nursery bed.