Development in Gardening: Reap Life!

As the global population rises and arable land disappears, it becomes increasingly vital that Africa boosts its food production. Many solutions call for a “Green Revolution” in Africa, similar to the agricultural transformation of the 1960s and 1970s that took hold in Asia and Latin America. A similar movement in Africa would require a serious overhaul in development policy, resource management and infrastructure. It might also employ unsustainable farming practices, such as crop monocultures and the use of petroleum-based fertilizers and genetically modified seeds. There is another school of thought that sees Africa’s potential in a different light: teaching sustainable practices to small-scale farmers. This is the approach of Development in Gardening, also know by its acronym, DIG.

Development in Gardening was founded in 2006 by two former Peace Corps volunteers to improve the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS. DIG provides the supplies and technical know-how to create customized urban micro-gardens at HIV clinics, hospitals, orphanages, and patients’ homes. They work primarily in Africa, but they also have two project sites in Latin America. They contribute to five of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals and seek to address the connections between HIV/AIDS, poverty, hunger and malnutrition. It is essential that HIV/AIDS patients receive proper nutrition as antiretroviral therapy is much less effective for those who are malnourished.

DIG collaborates with organizations already working in the community, which reduces start-up time and duplicative work. The organization emphasizes sustainability by training people to train each other, incorporating found materials and objects into their garden designs, water conservation and creating seed banks. The hope is that those who learn gardening techniques from the organization will bring those skills back to their neighborhoods and create their own plots and communal gardens with what they have available to them.

Perhaps the greatest gift of DIG is not what they teach but the social and psychological benefits experienced by the patients. The gardens provide a calm, meditative and positive environment; they strengthen community ties and reduce the social isolation that many HIV/AIDS patients experience. Participants have the opportunity to learn a skill-set, pass along their knowledge and improve their overall self-worth. Most of their participants are women with few life skills and their work with DIG helps them to become self-sufficient and sustaining. DIG empowers HIV/AIDS patients in the poorest regions of the world to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. This is best summed up by one of their participants: “I don’t want people to give us things – that’s not what it’s about. We want to do things for ourselves.”


Sarah Koch, co-founder of Development In Gardening, talks about the organization’s work in Africa and the importance of women:



Sarah Koch, 2008 YouthActionNet Fellow, talks about DIG
Laura Bush praising DIG
Segment about DIG on WBEZ 91.5

See how DIG has changed the lives of these women:
Florence's Story
Robina's Story
Learn more about the nutritional requirements of those living with HIV/AIDS

Photos courtesy of Development In Gardening

Coping with Climate Change through Weather Insurance

Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that focuses on creating long-lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. The vision of the organization and its member is to live in a just world without poverty. Oxfam America is just one of 15 organizations that are apart of internation confideration, Oxfam. Each of the 15 organizations are seperate from each other and are located around the world. Each organization tends to have a focus on certain issues. Oxfam America works on a wide arrange of issues, but their current campaigns focus on solutions to climate change, aid reform, and the rights of poor communites.

Oxfam and its partners believe that the accessibility of weather insurance to poor rural farmers is an important coping mechanism to farmers experiencing the adverse effects of climate change. In 2008, The Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation (HARITA) project began in the village of Adi Ha in Northern Ethiopia. The HARITA model of managing climate risk is based on three components: risk reduction, risk transfer, and prudent risk-taking. The risk reduction activities are completed by the entire community to reduce its risk of feeling the effects of droughts.

The risk transfer component of HARITA is weather insurance. The premiums from the weather insurance can be paid with cash or through the insurance for work (IFW) program. Poor farmers that participate in Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), a government-run food for work program, can pay for the insurance through labor. One of the most important aspects of weather insurance is that it makes poor farmers look less risky to banks and micro-finance institutions.

The prudent risk-taking component of HARITA is through micro-finance credit. Many farmers fear loan default for reasons they are unable to control, for example droughts. Farmers that purchase insurance are less scared to take out loans because they have insurance if a drought should occur. The insurance gives the farmers a sense of security, which provides them with more options to improve their next harvest with the help of micro-finance credit.

Because of the success of the pilot program in Adi Ha and the other four villages, Oxfam America and the World Food Programme (WFP) reached an agreement to launch a five-year program modeled after the HARITA project. The Rural Resilience Initiative (R4) will target the communities most vulnerable to climate change in other regions of Ethiopia and three other countries starting in 2011.

One criticism that I have of this project is that Oxfam does not have a solution to their continual payment of labor paid weather insurance. Oxfam needs to find outside funding to take over this part of the project otherwise the NGO will be responsible for paying it until the project ends.

For More Information:

A Tiny Seed and a Big Idea

Weather Insurance Coming to U.S. Farmers

World Bank Training 8 African Countries on Weather Insurance

Photo courtesy of: oxfamamerica.org