phfadmin
To water the land, to plant the seeds, all needs some basic equipment or some farming tools, without which the land refuses to give out its best. As the female members of the low-income, hotel-associated families which Helvetas’ project ERA-COVID-19 has been assisting, showed interest in raising kitchen gardens as well as some poultry.
Hence the project first trained the ladies on how to raise a kitchen garden/ poultry and then provided them with seeds (and poultry). In the training, they were also taught how to use the gardening tools and how to care for both the garden to extend the usage.
“Feeding a family of 13, our daily expense on just vegetables would usually amount to Rs. 450-500. After receiving the seeds, the training & the toolkits from Helvetas, my family helped me in raising a beautiful kitchen garden. We grow tomatoes, okra, cucumber, beans & chili. My son helped me calculate & we realised that we got to save Rs. 25000 in the past 3 months”.
–Tahira, w/o Ahmed Hussain – wife of hotel staff member
These were mostly families having 3 or 5 Marla backyard space and were eager to try their hand at kitchen gardening. A total of 454 sets of farming toolkits were distributed amongst the interested families. The toolkits included a pickaxe, spade, sickle, hand forks, trowel, watering cans, head pan, and cutter. The tools as well as the high-yielding, quality seeds, aided the families immensely, so much so that the gardens literally bloomed on the faces of the ladies as well.
