Sustainable household vegetable gardens

Students4Kids: About 80 teams have submitted a project idea to this year’s competition of Students4Kids. The jury decided that your project is among the best. What do you think makes your project so special?

Ivan Mutsaka: It creates a paradigm shift from facility-based treatment of malnutrition to household-based preventive measures. Key actors and immediate beneficiaries are the rural women and their children engaged in household chores. Thus increasing intake of required nutrients for mothers of reproductive age and infants. Enables the entire community to benefit both directly and indirectly through access of nutritious vegetables at established local market stalls all year round and motivates producers. The project naturally fits in household nutrient-cycle producing high quality organic vegetables.

Hidden hunger is a problem with far-reaching consequences and a variety of causes. How did you come up with your specific idea against hidden hunger in Uganda?

Since early times, a small plot near the house in rural areas has been used for growing a variety of local vegetables according to the season. Vegetables of high nutritive value were grown and consumed in homes during months of rain. We now want to emphasize this and sensitize more households through supporting them to scientifically lay gardens with minimum input and maximum output all year round.

You have until August 26th to work out your idea to a finished concept. What’s the work on that like for you? Are you all working together on the concept or have you for example split up the different tasks?

Knowing that it is a completion, the feelings are tense. Since university had not opened yet, work has been through our networking channels. Some friends clarified on why we only have to use local vegetable varieties and selected those that are most nutritious. Others did the SWOT analysis, while others found more facts about the hidden hunger situation in Uganda.

The winning team of the Students4Kids competition will receive 10,000 euros as start-up funding for their project. What exactly would you do with the money?

We would do the following things with the money: Pay for radio and TV talk shows on local stations for sensitizing communities, Printing information brochures and t-shirts, Facilitating community sensitization meetings, Mobilizing inputs: Local vegetable seeds from commercial producers in central Uganda, government research organizations like NARO, Purchase shed nets for gardens and other materials for construction of vegetable grow boxes and grow sacs, Raise at least two local market stalls for selling vegetables.

You have done a lot of research on the topic of hidden hunger. What did you learn that you may not have known before? What do you think everyone should know about the phenomenon?

Hidden hunger shows symptoms way latter in ones’ health, hidden hunger can be best mitigated through improving household food security by increasing intake of required micronutrients. Hidden hunger has severe effects on the future life of infants and increases health risks of pregnant women, most government and non-government actors have attempted to solve the challenge through treatment of symptoms not considering community-based preventive measures.