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Picture courtesy of World Vision

PROVIDING ENOUGH TO EAT

By Joyce Mulama, Communications Officer, World Vision Kenya (September 2009)

In a small community in Nyalunya, in Kisumu, about 385 kilometres from Kenya’s capital Nairobi, children previously had just a meal a day or went to bed hungry from lack of food. Now, they are healthy, for they eat three meals a day, thanks to a World Vision training that has seen an increase in food production in the area.

Prior to the project, chronic hunger, caused by crop failure from drought and perennial floods forced many families to cut down on meal times. This had severe implications not only on the children’s health, but also on their school performance, which drastically dwindled.

"In class, I could not hear what the teacher was saying, she sounded like she was singing. Because I felt drowsy all the time, I could not concentrate on any subject; I failed always," Benta Akoth, a nine year old girl in her second grade said.

Her mother, Leonida Akinyi Abuony, is full of praise for the World Vision training that has empowered farmers like herself and others within the Central Kolwa Community Disaster Mitigation Group to become food secure.

In the May 2007 training, the group, which serves the community’s population of about 25,000, was educated on appropriate farming practices that are conducive for the flood-prone area. These included opening up blocked water outlets to drain water from the farms to allow proper utilization of farms for crop growing. It also involved lessons on de-silting water pans to store flood water to be utilized later for domestic use and irrigation during drought.

When farmers like Akoth’s mother, Abuony, put into practice the lessons learnt, the benefits from her acre-piece of land were significant. "When I harvested this year, I got fifteen sacks (90 kilogrammes each) of maize and a sack of beans. Before the training, I would get just a sack of maize or none at all because I did not use inputs like fertilizers," she said, visibly content.