Inclusive Food Security for Persons with Disabilities
Jairos Jiri Association is raising funds to purchase a solar vegetable drier for 57 families with and of persons with disabilities and increase their participation in community development in Chivi district, Zimbabwe.
Jairos Jiri Association (JJA) is a local Zimbabwean NGO promoting the rights of persons with disabilities in Zimbabwe. People with disabilities often suffer exclusion and marginalization in development projects, disaster risk reduction and emergency response actions. In this campaign, JJA is working with households of persons with disabilities and households with persons with disabilities in Chivi district, in southern Zimbabwe. This is an area characterized by drought and cyclones.
Helping those in need
In 2020, JJA supported 57 families with and of persons with disabilities with a 1-hectare nutrition garden. The garden is running on a solar powered borehole to accommodate participation of persons with disabilities. Currently, they are producing enough vegetables for home consumption and excess for sale in order to boost their household income. However; they are facing challenges with regard to managing food spoilage/wastage when fresh produce goes unsold, and also during periods of lower production. As such they need to add value by drying the vegetables, for future consumption during the dry season and also for sale.
Currently, the community farmers use traditional methods of drying the vegetables, which compromises quality and is not suitable for drying larger volumes.
"We wish to train the beneficiaries on how to process vegetables produced form the garden and those picked from the forest resources to promote food and nutritional security all year round."
This project thus seeks to install a solar vegetable drier and to train the differently-abled community gardeners on how to process vegetables from the garden and those picked from the forest. We aim to implement this project before the lean season of 2021.
The solar vegetable drier investment and the knowledge gained through the project will give the beneficiaries the opportunity to enhance the benefits they reap from the community garden, through access to fresh and dried vegetables throughout the year. This will increase household income through selling fresh and dried vegetables to the surrounding community. Through targeting households with/of persons with disabilities, this project will, in the long run, help to address disparities between persons with disabilities and those without. It will also increase participation of persons with disabilities in community development discourses in Zimbabwe.
The $800 funds raised through this campaign will be invested in the solar vegetable drier, its installation cost and the training of community garden members on how to operate and maintain the infrastructure. This kind of investment will surely change the living conditions of persons with disabilities in the target area.
"The workshops were full of learning, challenges and fun. They have the potential to change the world especially for remote communities in terms of inclusion in the matters that affect their lives. For example, involving them in the whole processing of reflecting on their situation, the capacities, strengths and resources they have, the particular needs, and crystal ideas about solutions. I found the approach so engaging and beneficial to the rights holders." Decent Gaura, from the Jairos Jiri Association.
This campaign development has been supported by the Institute for Sustainable Food's Make it Grow project. Decent Gaura (giving an appeal in the campaign video) and Tafadzwa Munemo (the main narrator in the campaign video) co-created this campaign video proposal after taking part in a participatory video workshop series run virtually by Dr. Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya at the Institute for Sustainable Food
To donate to this specific project, please visit: Inclusion!!! Food security for persons with disabilities by Jairos Jiri Association | GivenGain