Afghan Kitchen Garden helps Latifa Feed Her Six Children

“In April I participated in a 3 day training course on urban agriculture, which taught me basic skills to set up a low cost, home based kitchen garden,” Latifa explains. She then received an agriculture kit, consisting of 14 different vegetable seeds and seedlings, basic agri tools; a spade, watering can, hand sickle and plastic tunnels for her autumn harvest, which she used to kick-start her own vegetable production. In the months following, UP female agriculture trainers regularly visited Latifa, and provided her with extension support and guidance to manage the kitchen garden. She also received additional trainings on rain water harvesting, irrigation, and the correct harvesting and storage of vegetables. “In early July I harvested several vegetables, such as tomatoes, courgette, spinach, okra and coriander,” Latifa says.

PIN supported 1000 food insecure households

Implemented with the support of the European Union, the kitchen gardening activity is part of a larger project seeking to improve resilience and strengthen the coping mechanism of highly food insecure households in informal settlements of urban communities in Afghanistan. “From 2013 to 2016, the UP project has already supported over 1,000 of the most food insecurehouseholds in the urban and peri-urban areas of Mazar-e-Sharif to strengthen their livelihoods system and access to improved nutrition,” says PIN Urban Poverty Urban manager Ann-Katrina Bregovic.

However, PIN’s years of experience conclusively suggests that helping families grow their own food is not sufficient enough to ensure their food security and nutritional status. It is also important to have a multi-sectorial approach to sustain the achievements of the UP project and ensure that children under the age of 2 do not suffer from irreversible conditions like stunted growth due to undernourishment. While access to nutrient-rich food like vegetable is vital for raising the nutritional status of children, loss of nutrients due to poor storage, improper cooking practices and symptoms of diseases, like diarrhea, leads to the undernourishment of children.

It is in this backdrop that PIN has intertwined a cross functional approach to addressing urban food security. Support to establish kitchen gardens is hence only a part of the entire system and does not end after the first harvest of vegetables. “PIN also provided training on hygiene and nutrition and cooking classes to Latifa and 150 other beneficiaries between 2013 and 2014. These trainings are tailored for mothers, children and the male breadwinners in the family to facilitate their behavioral change for better hygiene and nutrition practices,” says Ann-Katrina Bregovic.

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It was my first hygiene training

“In the first training about hygiene, I together with my children took part in games where we learned about how germs and bacteria spread from hands to objects and to other people’s hands, about spread of diarrhea and importance of hand washing to avoid it,” describes Latifa abou the hygiene training. Since most households in Afghanistan do not have access to running water, even simplest of hygienic practices like hand washing is a daily ordeal. Most of these families also cook outside their house in a wood burning stove and do not even have basic kitchen equipment for food storage.

Therefore the UP team not only provides trainings, they also complement beneficiaries’ increased awareness through provision of hygiene kits. These hygiene kits contain a hand washing station, food storage containers, chopping board, water jug and other smaller items. “These kits are intended to maintain adequate food hygiene within households; helping families to keep drinking water and cooked food stowed away from flies and possible contamination,” says Ann-Katrina Bregovic.

Cooking sessions for Latifa

By the end of 2014 Latifa will receive more training about the importance of vegetables for children and pregnant women, and in particular, how she can feed her children better with the little resources she has. In the upcoming few months, Latifa will also attend cooking sessions where she will learn ways to cook food in a healthier way and preserve its nutrient values. UP will also train her to store vegetables for the winter season by drying or pickling them and will support her in another winter harvest with plastic tunnels.

In 2015, Latifa will still receive another package of seeds and extension support from the UP project. By the end of that year Latifa is envisioned to have a viable kitchen garden all year round and a sustainable source of nutrient rich vegetables for her family.

This story is jointly written by Ann-Katrina Bregovic, UP Program Manager and Sudip Joshi, PIN Media Focal Point for Northern Afghansitan. For more information, please contact- ann.bregovic@peopleinneed.cz and/or sudip.joshi@peopleinneed.cz.