Health Care and Health Awareness

• Estimated Project Cost:  12738600
• Estimated Fund Requirement:   12738600

• Project Focus:   Diet and Nutrition.

Organic kitchen garden in rural jharkhand

Organic Kitchen Garden

A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute revealed that in rural India, close to 76% of the people cannot afford a nutritious diet. Although most rural Indians are farmers and make a living with agriculture as their main occupation, their wages are not enough to provide them with nutritious food.

The lack of adequate nutrition has led to several health problems and severe cases of malnutrition can be seen among all age groups. In an effort to help rural Indians gain adequate nutrition and live a healthy lifestyle, the Kitchen Garden Project is needed to be implemented.

THE STRUGGLE FOR BASIC NUTRITION

India recognized that the rural residents could not afford an adequate quantity of food and enough vegetables for nutrition even if they spent their entire income on food. There are two main problems that we saw in rural India:

• Lack of adequate income to afford nutritious food.

• Health problems and severe malnutrition due to bad food and unhealthy food intake.

The cost of vegetables and healthy ingredients are too high for people to afford. As most of the rural Indians work as farmers or in agricultural fields, their minimum wages are inadequate to feed their entire family and keep their farming business afloat.

A solution to these problems is the Kitchen Garden Project so we want to pilot this project in 2 blocks of Ranchi district and then replicate the same in other blocks and  districts too.

HEALTHY LIVING WITH THE KITCHEN GARDEN PROJECT

The main aim behind the Kitchen Garden Project is to help rural Indians get adequate nutrition every day and find a means to increase their income to afford it. The kitchen Garden Project will begin by helping the people find space in their home yards to cultivate basic vegetables that could be used in their everyday diet. 

ICFG (Institute of Community Forest Governance) teams will educate the people to grow vegetables organically that have good nutritional values. We will teach the people about the techniques and methods to cultivate the plants so that yield is good and healthy.

These are some activities that ICFG will carry out to encourage the Kitchen Garden Project:

• Public gatherings will be organized by ICFG volunteers and members with the help of local authoritative bodies and leaders.
• People will be educated on the benefits of the Kitchen Garden Project both health-wise and in means of increasing their income.
• 10 families will be identified as beneficiaries from 25 villages of two blocks of Ranchi district i.e. Angada and Budmu. Other families in the villages will also be encouraged to join the training programs and attend meetings about the Kitchen Garden Project.
• The families will be briefed about the cultivation process beginning from preparing the plots for cultivating land to sowing the seed and reaping the harvest.
• The beneficiary families will receive a kit from ICFG which contains a variety of vegetable seeds to be sowed in the selected space. Each kit will contain 5 varieties, 4 vine varieties, and 1 spinach variety.
• The families will begin their Kitchen Gardens under constant supervision and help from ICFG teams.
• Our teams and special trainers will regularly visit the beneficiary families to help them with the preparation of organic fertilizers and insect repellants to help them grow healthy vegetables with great yield.
• We will keep on reminding the families of their Kitchen Garden benefits and families encourage other people to join the initiative. ICFG will design and put up A5 posters in the homes of the Kitchen Garden Beneficiaries to inspire themselves and the others. The posters will contain benefits of the Kitchen Gardens, how will they help save money, provide adequate nutrition every day and how people can take a surplus of vegetables from a small place and earn more income.
• The Kitchen Garden Project will initiate to be a sustainable model that helps people earn more income and get nutritious food every day. We will insure that Women Self Help Groups in the village have taken the responsibility of guiding and monitoring the Kitchen Gardens.
• The SHG members will be trained by the Project Managers and other Resource persons at ICFG office every month. The field teams will visit the Kitchen Gardens and provide required support to ensure that the project remains sustainable.

Backyard surplus

The Projects primary aim is to help families grow their own vegetables to get adequate daily nutrition. But if the families start to see a surplus in their produce, ICFG will help the beneficiaries find the better market for the surplus produce.

We will set up mechanisms to track the list and quantity of the vegetables harvested by the beneficiary and the net worth of the vegetables cultivated in each village.

The beneficiary families will not only eat healthy but they will also harvest enough vegetables to sell to others and earn more income. The beneficiary families will inspire more people in their villages to establish Kitchen Gardens.