CWS observes World Food Day, October 16
Marcela Chic inspects tomatoes she and neighbors are growing in greenhouses in the Totonicapán region of Guatemala.
Photo: Rolanda Hughes/CWS
|
Your support for Church World Service and the CROP Hunger Walk in your community is helping people around the world to achieve food security and improve their lives through gardening, building, water, and other projects. Here are some examples.
As we observe World Food Day, October 16, Church World Service is working to empower people around the world to develop strategies to grow more and better food and find other ways to provide for themselves and their families.
In parts of the central highlands of Guatemala, for example, women are growing vegetables in the cool climate--and on rocks and hillsides--with the help of Church World Service and the Conference of Evangelical Churches in Guatemala and its local partners.
Participants are increasing food production on their small parcels using greenhouses and tire gardens, developing new water collection and filtration methods, using available natural resources, growing new crops, and making their own fertilizer, and improving family nutrition with the new produce they are growing--now year-round.
Many families are growing warm climate vegetables such as tomatoes, green peppers, and cucumbers in greenhouses made from plastic sheeting stretched over wooden frames. One greenhouse shared by five families has had five to six crops of vegetables in its two years of operation. The families are now growing enough to sell at the market, boosting their income and helping them better provide for their families.
In the warmer months, families are also growing a variety of vegetables outside of the greenhouses to help improve family nutrition, including radishes, peas, squash, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.
In Bosnia, some 70 families in the community of Bosansko Grahovo are creating a cooperative to sell part of the milk they produce and earn an income. Bosansko Grahovo has a population of about 3,000 people.
The community was devastated during the war in the Balkans, with most homes and businesses destroyed. Most pre-war jobs are no longer available, leaving families to find other means of providing for themselves. Selling milk can provide a dependable, predictable, and continuous source of income.
The families have found a dairy in nearby Bihac that will buy the milk they produce, if they have the appropriate equipment to handle it, and can comply with certain regulations and procedures.
To comply, the families are establishing a legal entity through which the milk sale will be organized, guaranteeing production levels and documenting the health of the cows, employing a veterinarian, educating themselves on milk hygiene, providing a milk station near a main road, installing adequate cooling tanks and other equipment, and purchasing a truck with a cooling tank for milk collection--all with the help of Church World Service. The cooperative already has the necessary office equipment for maintaining records.
The establishment of the cooperative, along with individual loans to help farmers purchase additional cows, is enabling the families to bring themselves out of poverty. In the near future, another 80 families--some with no cows yet--are also planning to join the cooperative.
In Laos, some 240 abandoned and orphaned children, ages five to 20, have food to eat and a bed in a comfortable dormitory at the Church World Service-supported Luang Prabang Orphanage.
Along with basic education, the children are learning vocational skills such as carpentry, weaving, and fish farming.
The Lao government, which pays the salaries of teachers and administrators, now runs the orphanage. CWS provides input on new curriculum and non-formal education, and assists with facilities and building maintenance and repair.
The students' monthly government food stipend is supplemented by vegetables and fruits from gardens that CWS helped establish and the children and orphanage staff maintain.