A healthy crop of potatoes.
Agriculture is a crucial economic activity, providing employment and livelihoods for 88.6% of the working population while dominating Rwanda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at approximately 47%. And yet the village Cyanika, where Village Makeover is currently working, is seeing 8 out of 10 farmers remain in subsistence farming and poverty.
As we looked at this we understood that in order to impact their daily lives we needed to invest our energy and resources in this area. We put together a focus group consisting of the Governor of the sector, the Minister of Agricultural, a VMO team member and local farmers.
What came out of this discussion group were sustainable and manageable procedures that best served this farming community:
- The potato is an important food and cash crop for this area. It has a short cropping cycle and a large production per area and time.
- Current yield average was around 10 tons per hectare, which was well below the yields of 25 tons per hectare possible. The yield gap was attributed to using low quality seed potatoes and poor disease management as well as soil fertility management.
- There was a critical need for training in these areas. We worked with the local extension program and acquired training that had been used and proven to be successful. Twenty farmers were selected for the formal training and each of them were required to teach ten more farmers. Within two months we had over 200 farmers trained. Village Makeover uses this “each-one-teach-one” model for many of their initiatives. It empowers the people by giving them ownership of the project and helps us be strategic with our resources and time.
Potato Wilt
- Once trained on Positive Seed Selection (identifying diseased crops) a Diffused Light Store (DLS) was needed for sprouting the clean seed for the next planting cycle. A is a building to store the potatoes in thin layers on shelves or trays in natural, diffused (indirect) light with good ventilation. Previous storage methods had no ventilation and resulted in mold, mildew and ruined seed crop.
Next came the funding. We had a family whose vision was global and they were able to see the need and the importance of a project like this. They funded both the Positive Seed Selection training and the Diffused Light Store.
This project generates income from the Diffused Light Store and was set up as a micro loan. The proceeds will build more Diffused Light Store houses so that all farmers can acquire clean seed and benefit from higher crop yields. The participating farmers are doubling their yields and realizing greater income from their crops.
Rabbit Breeding Project
The rabbit breeding project was borne out of need, need for food security and income for one of Rwanda’s most vulnerable groups, widows and their children. This one village alone has approximately 300 hundred widows, most with children.
What we knew was that when the government had given these women rabbits in the past, they ate them. We knew we had to do this differently. One of Village Makeover’s main objectives is to build communities through building relationships. A way of accomplishing this objective while advancing the project was to use our “each-one-teach-one model that we’ve incorporated into all of our work. Our team of native born Rwandans was able to identify the widow who had the most influence within the widow group. We met with her and asked her to put a small group together that would follow her lead. We then created our first cell for breeding the rabbits (the cell is a long series of connecting rabbit hutches).
Breeding rabbits provides widows with income and food for their families.
We used the “each-one-teach-one” method for this project. In short the first small group of women were taught about caring for the rabbits, the steps involved in doing that and how to create a cooperative for the breeding and selling of the rabbits. Each women was obligated to take an active roll in the cell management, breed her rabbits to pass the offspring onto the next widow and teach all that she had been taught. Working in this way there is an accountability system built in, as the women each have a role that depends on another doing their job.
We now have six cells with all the widows and some women living in desperately poor households involved. They are able to feed their families, improve their families nutrition, feel empowered by having a role in their families well being and realize an income from selling the meat to local restaurants.
Future goals of this project are:
- Expand the commercial aspect of this project into new markets.
- Produce organic fertilizer from the rabbit droppings.
- Open a market for the sale of the rabbit pelts.
This project has advanced to procuring goats and is using the same methods as with the rabbits. The women are also envisioning cattle in the near future.