For close to a year now, JESE with support from CARE, has been implementing the Fill the Nutrition Gap (FNG) Project in Kyaka II refugee settlement in Kyegegwa district. The project was as a result of the fact that most of the development partners were paying attention to other issues and living out the component of livelihood. This left many persons of concern struggling to access food and most of the children got malnourished.

To reverse the situation, the FNG project was brought on board. This project has a number of components including Gender, nutrition, Agriculture and production and marketing among others.

Denis Mwesigwa, the project coordinator, says that before the implementation of the project, most of the families were surviving on insufficient food rations from the government and development partners.

The project is working with 1,000 households and these have been trained in different areas like moulding energy-saving cook stoves to reduce on the rampant cutting down of trees for firewood.

To start with, target beneficiaries were organised into groups and trainings in vegetable growing stated. Demonstration gardens were established in selected areas where association members would meet, learn and work together. The idea was to replicate the same knowledge in their own homes.

Zawadi Claudine is one of the beneficiaries. She says that before the project, they only used to grow maize and beans and had no idea about vegetable growing and her children had become anaemic.

“We were living in a terrible situation but when JESE and CARE came, we were taught how to grow vegetables like spinach, dodo, onions, carrots, egg plants and many others. We now see change in our homes. We eat well and our children look healthy,” Zawadi says.

Jean Hatimana is another beneficiary of the FNG project. He says that the training from CARE and JESE is transforming their lives. He notes that under their group they have established a big group garden where they harvest vegetables for home consumption and for sale.

“Going forward, our plan it to buy a motorcycle and start a salon as our alternative sources of income,” Hatimana says.

Francine Deborah is a Community Based Trainer (CBT) for Vijana Group notes that on top of vegetable growing, the project added the component of saving.

“Right now, every member of the group has a kitchen garden. We started selling some of the vegetables in July and saved some of the money. From July to November, we have sold vegetables worth 1.2 million shillings,” Deborah says.

In addition to vegetable growing, farmers were also given rabbits for sale and consumption. These have also added to the boosting of nutrition and ensuring food security among the beneficiaries.

VHT Component

Tackling the high prevalence of malnutrition needed a multi thronged approach. Having vegetables alone would not solve the issue entirely, and this is the reason why Village Health Teams were involved.

Lamonde Emmanuel is one of the many VHTs that worked on the project. He says that his efforts to fight malnutrition and anaemia were even hampered by some cultural beliefs of the mothers in the settlement.

“You would go to assess the health of the child and the mother would say you want to bewitch the child. But we would always say no: we only want to check the health condition of the baby,” Emmanuel says.

He, however, adds that the situation has since changed. Mothers were taught how to take care of their children, feed them well on energy giving and body building foods, and this has drastically reduced on the malnutrition cases in the settlement areas where the project is being implemented. “We even gave a mark tape to every household. Mothers can now take measurement of their own children. We thank JESE and CARE so much for this intervention,” he says. 

On November 24^th, Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE) under the Rwenzori Agroecology Platform (RAP) with support from Iles de Paix (IDP) and CARE are organized an indigenous seed and food fair in Rwenzori Sub Region.

The event took place at Reinah Hotel in Fort Portal Tourism City and was concluded with an exhibition of indigenous seeds and food.

The major objective of the activity was to showcase the actual and potential contribution of farmer-managed seed systems on conservation of agricultural biodiversity, food security and food sovereignty of smallholder farming communities in Rwenzori Sub Region.

It should be noted that JESE, IDP partners, CARE and other RAP actors have been working with communities to improve food security through agroecology and increasing resilience of rural communities for a long time.

Globally, we observe increasing and overlapping levels of malnutrition, including undernutrition and over nutrition, and related non communicable diseases. Worldwide,795 million people are not able to meet their minimum dietary energy needs (FAO, 2015), 2 billion people lack essential minerals and vitamins (FAO ,2013) and over 2billion people are overweight or obese (WHO,2015).

Almost half our global citizens now experience food shortages and food nutrition insecurity to the extent that they cannot be active and healthy lives. Increased scrutiny of global food resources and food security has brought attention to shrinking diversity in major food crops in national diets.

According to the findings of continental Accountability scorecard launched by the African Union and the African leaders for Nutrition (ALN) in 2019, data shows that in African continent, 8 million children under5 years are stunted, 58.4 million of these stunted are in Africa.

Malnutrition is not only one of the worst killers of children under five years of age but prevents children and adolescents from reaching their full potential and traps entire populations in vulnerability. Through its negative effects on the development of human capital and its productivity, malnutrition contributes to the delay in African countries ‘economic and social development, with unacceptable human consequences on African individuals, communities’ and nations. Nutrition and Resilience concepts are strongly interlinked: nutrition is both an input to and an outcome of strengthened resilience. Reducing malnutrition is crucial to strengthening resilience because well nourished individuals are healthier, can work harder and have greater physical reserves; households that are nutrition secure are thus better able to with stand, endure more longer and recover more quickly from external shocks.

Conversely, households that are least resilient are more affected by shocks and therefore face the greatest risk of malnutrition; thus strengthening resilience is essential in efforts to reduce malnutrition.

The food and agriculture sector is essential to human nutrition and to communities ‘resilience, but approaches designed to increase house holds’ resilience to shocks do not always contribute to positive and sometimes even have negative nutrition outcomes. Specific attention is required to make resilience –building interventions “nutrition- sensitive.”

Indigenous and traditional food systems have served as a major source of healthy diet that ensures food and nutrition security. Access to secure, nutritious, and healthy food is one of the aspects offering greater human security and societal stability. Indigenous and traditional food systems have served as a major source of healthy diet amongst the local communities. Indigenous peoples are the world are stewards of nature and holders of vast local knowledge and traditions, handed down from generation to generation, that guide them in living interdependently with the environment.

Indigenous and traditional food systems represent a treasure of trove of knowledge that contributes to wellbeing and health, benefiting communities preserving a rich biodiversity, and providing nutritious food. Indigenous and traditional territories are home to 80 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity and often play a wider role in environmental conservation.

At the Indigenous Seeds and Food Fair, farmers showcased different agroecological practices, indigenous and traditional foods and seeds in Rwenzori Sub Region, and how these are preserved, prepared and consumed. 2

The event also created awareness on the value of indigenous/ traditional food systems, agroecology and their contribution in strengthening the resilience capacity of smallholder farming communities to climate change related stresses. Also, it provided a platform for experience sharing and dialogue on creating an enabling policy environment for scaling up agroecology as a driver for enhancing ecosystem health and transformation of food systems towards resilience, equity and sustainability.

This was achieved through discussions and speeches by selected key guests on indigenous seeds and foods, nutrition and other components and exhibition of indigenous seeds and foods, value added products, indigenous products display, herbs and herbal products displays that took place at the Green Belt along Balya Road in Fort Portal Tourism City.

The Fair was attended by Rwenzori Sub region community, Civil Society organisations, Private Sector, Local government leaders, Cultural leaders, media and Key farmers in the districts of Rwenzori Sub Region.