School Garden Project Meeting

We had a meeting with the community to set up the school garden on February 25^th 2014. We discussed the feasibility of the project, and the community decided on March 3^rd 2014 to begin work next year on the garden. They attributed their decision to the construction the new mosque because they would not have the time to invest in the garden.

Ideally, the women, men and children will help in putting together the garden. After the rainy season, the men will bring a bucketful of peanut and millet flour for the poste de santé. This will be to support the cooking demonstrations of the care group volunteers during baby weighing.

Some of the limitations of this project are the lack of motivation of Dassalami Soce to install a garden. This would be a great opportunity to implement behavior change activities. This would help target their misperceptions towards the uses and benefits of gardens. This could be done by showing the financial commitment of the school staff and students to have a garden. The students could also be included in the planning, building and maintenance phase of the garden.

Some of the concerns that were voiced were the commitment of the community to the project, the maintenance of the garden, especially when it comes to watering the garden. With the increasing work in the fields, the women were not willing to take on other responsibilities. During the meeting, the village chief reminded the community about fencing the garden to prevent grazing. We will use about 10m2 of land to assess the productivity of the community and decide whether to expand the garden.

Most of the men work in my community but the women have more household tasks than them. Even when a woman is tired coming from the fields, she is still expected to cook dinner for the family. This is especially hard in monogamous relationships where a woman does not have co-wives to help in the household.  

The ASC and the Child Fund agent are continuing to bring awareness on the need of a garden to reduce malnutrition rates in Dassalami, Saroudia and Boutilimite. I wonder if the lack of communication between the village chief and the community is due to his lack of influence. After the meeting, the men and women have promised 1000cfa bag of peanut flour for the poste de santé. Those flour bags would be given to the malnourished children.