Sack Gardens in Eastleigh

Eastleigh, Nairobi

Erica and Coral visiting a home in Juja, Eastleigh

Earlier this week, the team from Nova Scotia joined us in Eastleigh as we helped Laura Muema following up with the eight refugee women who had won our vertical gardening contest in Eastleigh through Canadian Baptist Ministries Urban gardening project. Each of the women had successfully started sack gardening outside of the Eastleigh Community Centre and are now having a regular harvest of fresh produce for their families.

Climbing narrow stairways in the crowded

apartment blocks of Eastleigh

Laura Muema presenting prizes to

two of the Somali Women in Eastleigh

Each of the winners of the contest (8 women in the top three teams)

received food bundles to help supplement their families diet

Sack Gardens in Eastleigh

Urban Gardening

Iftin student, Ikran, very proud of her sack garden

in the Iftin Unity Garden at the

Eastleigh Community Centre

It has been so encouraging to see how well the Iftin ladies are doing in their gardening project both at the community centre and throughout the city. We now have students starting gardens of their own in three communities outside of Eastleigh. We pray for their success, as they seek to help their families improve their diet and income.

Sack Gardens are doing well in Eastleigh

The Unity Garden is now supporting families with sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, spinach and kales. "What is next?" we asked some of the girls today.

"Fruit trees!" one of the students answered. And no doubt, it won't be long before this will be a reality.

Nasra finds a little space in her apartment

building to grow a sack garden

Erica and Laura helping the Noor Self Help Group

prepare for an upcoming Christmas Sale

Thank you for upholding these ladies in your prayers.

Growing

Vertical sack gardens doing well!

Over the past month, the Iftin ladies really don't need a watering can, as Eastleigh is getting almost daily rains. It may make the streets muddy, but all the rain has been great for the Iftin gardens.

Laura at work in her new office

Activities are going on as usual in Eastleigh. The ladies are back in full attendance within all of the Iftin projects. Presently, Erica and Laura are working on the final reporting for the Canadian Baptist Ministries pilot project that has funded the Iftin Women's Empowerment initiatives over the past three years. As this project comes to an end in December, we are already dreaming with the ladies about the future. We are excited to be working on what the next phase of the project will look like!

More new books and supplies for Iftin

Nelius teaching in the Iftin Literacy Class

Patrick, Laura and Erica

labelling new chairs donated by the

Fallingbrook Heights volunteers

Seed beds and sweet potatoes in the Iftin Unity Garden

Sack Gardens

Two local guys helping three of the Iftin ladies bring sack garden supplies to their home with a hand cart. We are so excited to see how many women are embracing the bag gardening project!

Green Thumbs

Urban Gardening Training

at the Eastleigh Community Centre

Tim giving out seeds to members of Iftin

This past Monday and Tuesday, we had the joy of having our CBM colleague and friend Tim Bannister return to Eastleigh to lead a follow up training on urban gardening with 25 members of the Iftin Women's Empowerment Program.

Tim and Diane Bannister during the

second day's gardening demonstration

(attracting quite a crowd from the primary school at recess)

Somali and Oromo women building their sack gardens

Aaron and Tim building a sample bag with the ladies

Erica and Tim showing the ladies the basics of gardening

Each of the ladies were assigned a small group that they will build several sack gardens with at the community centre and tend their gardens with. The ladies will keep each other accountable and at any time can take tools and gardening resources back to their homes where they can establish their sack gardens for their families... a fresh and abundant supply of spinach, onions, tomatoes and kales.

Nelius with her small group's first sack garden

"Proud Gardeners"

Jen with a member of Iftin

Thomas and Erica play fighting

with some of the Somali boys

"Everyone likes Kung-Fu Fighting... huh!"

Some of the urban gardening participants

Tim and Diane after a successful time of training

Green Thumbs Up!

Urban Gardens

Vertical Gardening in Nairobi

The Iftin Women's Empowerment Program in Eastleigh, Nairobi, is striving to help vulnerable refugee families living in the informal settlements of Nairobi to improve their lives. As Canadian Baptists, we are committed to several aspects of transformation, including issues of food security. In urban areas of Africa, millions of people become trapped in sprawling ghettos, slums and shanty towns where people live on less than a dollar a day. In such communities, most of a family's income goes to either food or shelter.

Training in Eastleigh

Tim and Diane Bannister not only lead the short term volunteer program of Canadian Baptist Ministries in Kenya, but Tim is our resident agricultural and agro-forestry expert. We are looking forward to having him back in Eastleigh on May 16 and 17 to lead a training program on vertical sack gardening with the Iftin members. This will be our fourth training on sack gardening at the Eastleigh Community Centre. It has been encouraging to see God at work in the lives of families who had never gardened before.

Please keep Tim and the Iftin group in your prayers as we work together to provide a reliable and inexpensive supplement to the diet of refugee families.

The first vertical bag garden workshop at the Eastleigh Community Centre led by our Canadian Baptist Ministries colleague Timothy Bannister with Bruno Soucey and Aaron, back in 2009.

Learn more about the use of bag gardens in improving food security for impoverished communities through the work of other organizations serving in Kenya:

LINK Kibera:

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Sack-Gardens-of-the-Kibera-Slum

LINK Cowfiles:

http://www.cowfiles.com/african-gardens/bag-gardens

LINK Solidarites:

http://www.solidarites.org/ourprog/Kenya/humanitarian-action.shtml

Iftin Champs!

Aaron & Erica with Nelius, Farhiya

and the students of Iftin's class two

Last Friday was sports day at the Eastleigh Community Centre and the Iftin students were thrilled to have won a Volleyball Trophy against the faculty of the primary school. Today the students in class two shared with us and our friend Naoma. We are thankful for the commitment of Nelius and Farhiya as they walk with the students day by day in the literacy project.

Mathare Community Garden

Gardening in the Urban Jungle

Solidarites International staff worker Akoi and community beneficiary Josephat with a vertical garden of kales. We are thankful for the help of both Akoi and Josephat who have assisted the Iftin women in establishing vertical sack gardens in Eastleigh. Over the past three years, the Mathare Community Garden project has helped over 8000 vulnerable households build and harvest their own vegetables and raise their own poultry. Families are trained on the construction, care and maintenance of the gardens and are provided the materials to make 3 to 6 vertical gardens of their own.

Sukuma Seedbeds and vertical sack gardens

As we continue to work together with the Iftin members on strengthening the women's empowerment program, we are learning from our friends in Mathare Valley on how to best provide food security for the urban poor.

Tomato vines in the Mathare Community Greenhouse

Naoma and one of Hawa's daughters

today at Noor Creations

Noor Creations

VIDEO PODCAST

This week, we posted a video podcast for our colleague Lois Mitchell and her students at Saint Stephen University. In this 17 minute video, we talk about the importance of women's empowerment within Integral Mission.

To download our latest video podcast, please click on the link below for our public dropbox site:

Video Podcast

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7126669/Fivekennys%20Video%20Podcast%20Women%27s%20Empowerment.m4v.zip

Mass Planting Day

Vertical Gardening in an Urban Slum

Empowers Women through Food Security

As a follow up to our first vertical gardening day, which Tim Bannister had lead on June 18th, the women of Iftin completed a refresher workshop today facilitated by Mr. Stanslous Akoi of the Solidarites organization.

Since June, seventeen women from the original training day have been committed to caring for the six test gardens and finding suitable places in their own homes to build more gardens. These women were joined today by another thirteen ladies who participated in the training.

Aaron getting some help in unloading bags of manure, soil and stone for today's mass planting.

The stones alone were a big job to carry.

But everyone got involved!

Mr. Josephat Oduor assisting the Iftin ladies in building a sample vertical garden in a used feed sack.

All you need to build a garden like this is:
a sack, soil, manure, stones, seeds/seedlings,
and finally the most difficult ingredient
... water.

The women broke up into several groups to go and find the water needed to build a sample garden. With the current drought conditions in Kenya, Nairobi is under severe water rationing: Like everyone living in Nairobi, the people of Eastleigh receive water only once a week. Storing enough water to make due until the next week's rationing is extremely difficult if not impossible for most people.

Once a vertical garden is built, a family can water it using waste kitchen water and even washing water. We are planting gardens within the community at this time in hopes that the October short rains will come to Eastleigh. In answer to our prayers, we did receive a rain shower this evening -- we hope that this is a sign of more to come!

Members of the Iftin women's group

very proud of their vertical garden.

A 50 kg maize sack like this one can support 25 seedlings along the sides and on top. Three sacks like this will provide a family a regular source of Sukumawiki (Kale), spinach, beans, tomatoes, onions and any number of other fruits and vegetables. Ten sacks like this will provide a family a steady source of income!

A seedbed produces a new harvest of seedlings for planting each month. The women in the program are then able to plant and care for the seedlings in their homes. Crops like Sukuma and Spinach are able to be harvested every 3 to 4 weeks.

Iftin ladies preparing bags of supplies

to carry back to their homes.

Women gathering stones for their vertical gardens

(A column of stone built through the centre of

each garden sack is crucial for evenly irrigating

a vertical garden. Without a properly build stone

core a vertical garden will fail).

The great highlight of our day was seeing

the ladies working together to carry the

supplies to their homes.

This young girl quietly listened to the instruction times and watched the entire demonstration. Off to the side, she along with a few other girls, gathered some supplies and began to build there own test garden. When the training day was complete, she had already assembled her supply bags and began to drag them back to where she lived.

Please pray for these women as they struggle to find ways to better care and provide for their families. We hope that in some small way that this program will make a lasting impact upon their lives.