In our ‘April edition – ‘Taking people out of poverty, permanently’, we have articles about our program partners in the Philippines, Zambia, Ethiopia, Cameroon and a great Rotary project for immigrants to any country.

Message from the Chair

I sit here writing this, in the garden, looking at the first camellia of the season, and thinking about people that have come to our country.  Camellias mean nothing to many of them, where nutritious food for their children is a daily struggle.  We are all so lucky.

To assist new Tasmanian’s to make a shift from the countries they have come from, to growing vegetables in this country, a group comprising Rotarians from Rotary Club of Hobart, the Royal Society of Tasmania, the Rotaract Club of Sandy Bay and senior member of the Nepalese community have run a second workshop, this time for the Ethiopian Community

Fresh Food for Families is a sub group of Food Plant Solutions RAG, and received an allocation from the District Designated Fund for this purpose.  The workshop will enable these Ethiopian families to prepare soil, plant seeds, nurture and harvest their crops and prepare nutritious meals for their families, using a kitchen garden calendar.

The first workshop was run for the new Nepalese community last year, and from that a “How to” document was prepared and placed on our website. This is available for download from anyone who wants to replicate this process in their communities. I recommend it to you all.

And I end with a reminder to you all that we continue to need funds to carry out our work. Please consider us as you spread your fundraising money this year.

Yours in Rotary

PDG Una Hobday, Chair Food Plant Solutions

Nutritious Food a Human Right

Nutritious Food a Human Right

Ngo Banfogha Abdulai – Founder & Executive Director

Hope for a better future (H4BF) cooperative society is a Cameroon youth led non-governmental, apolitical and non-denominational organization formed in 2009. H4BF’s mission is to create opportunities for growth and poverty reduction, so as to enhance sustainable development initiatives in the country. In order to achieve this, H4BF facilitates networking with both local and international like-minded organizations and individuals to share best practiced knowledge, skills and techniques required to provide adequate sustainable solutions to the intervention areas.

Agriculture, food security and nutrition share a common entry point: “food.” In order to solve the problem of food security and undernourishment, farmers, especially small holder farmers in rural areas have to be taught not just sustainable crop production but also consumption of nutritious foods. H4BF in its intervention strategies seeks key partnership opportunities and networks to shape the evolution of food systems in Cameroon to not only end poverty and hunger amongst the rural poor, especially vulnerable groups including pregnant women and young children.  But, to also improve nutrition through sustainable cultivation and consumption of nutritious foods. We adopt verified sustainable innovative agricultural practices with special focus on climate-smart agriculture and building more inclusive and efficient food value chains. The partnership with Food Plant Solutions boost the implementation of this key strategy and bring us closer to achieving this goal.

Editors Note: FPS recently created a field guide for Cameroon and upon receipt H4BF advised “Thank you and the entire Food plant solutions team for the great work you have done.  It is absolutely incredible.”

Nutrition For Education and Development

Nutrition 4 Education & Development

Hiwot Amare – Founder

Nutrition 4 Education & Development (N4ED) is an Ethiopian nonprofit whose mission is to improve children’s nutrition and ensure their full cognitive and physical development. The main activities of the organization focus on giving parents the knowledge, desire, self-confidence and the financial capacity to provide nutritious and balanced food for their children. That is done through nutrition and health education, home-gardening, saving and loan programs, business, life skill and technical training, and affordable child care services. N4ED avoids providing any kind of direct food or financial aid to avoid dependency.

N4ED was introduced to Food Plant Solutions by the rotary club of Addis Ababa central Mella.  N4ED is planning urban gardening, as a pilot in one of its projects, to motivate caregivers to use at home, the ingredients they see in cooking demonstration classes.

Food Plant Solutions was the perfect partner as both organisations’ share the same vision (focus in providing tools that tackle malnutrition, especially in the first 1000 days, in a preventive and sustainable manner). And, Food Plant Solutions has the technical skills in urban gardening that N4ED lacks to launch its new intervention. Food Plant Solutions will not only enable the community members to eat better, but it also builds the capacity of N4ED as it equips it with tools adapted to its context that it can reuse in future projects.

FPS in Zambia

FPS in Zambia

Brian M Mwangela – Victorite General Dealers

Victorite General Dealers (VGD) is a registered start-up social enterprise in Livingstone, Zambia. Part of their corporate social responsibility is working with rural small scale farmers teaching best farming practices. It is for this reason that they saw fit to partner with Food Plants Solutions.

Food Plant Solutions created the field guide ‘Potentially Important Food Plants of Zambia’, which VGD reviewed and is now in the process of translating.  It is hoped that the translation will be completed mid-2019.

The creation of the publication was viewed as a great milestone for the country, with the Ministry of Agriculture in Livingstone District very happy with the document.  The field guide will help many Zambians, especially woman and youths in rural areas, to acquire knowledge on edible plants that will help fight poverty at household level, resulting in food security and healthier communities.  Food Plant Solution’s focus of providing information that allow people to make well informed decisions and choices on what plant to grow and eat is the best way people can have a sustainable way of living.

Using ‘the field guide, training is occurring with small scale farmers in Maunga village via TOTs (village headmen and village committees) that Victorite General Dealers trained.   The Information has been well received by the small scale farmers.  “I want to take this opportunity to thank Food Plants Solutions for the field guide that will help many small scale farmers have knowledge that will benefit their families.” 

The Muravah Foundation – Philippines

Muravah Foundation – Philippines

Robert “Bob” Murray – President, Muravah Foundation Inc.

“We take the people out of poverty, permanently”

Muravah Foundation Inc. was founded over 10 years ago in the Philippines, among of which is where our head office is situated- Barangay Sua – a small community of 1900+ people. Inspired by the poverty and poor living condition of the area, we came up with our only mission and main objective “We take the people out of poverty, permanently”.

Ever since the Muravah Foundation Inc. continuously design programs and projects that will help improve the quality of life of the people and bring sustainable development to the community.

We adopted the whole community, by doing so we are able to address the socio-economic, cultural and environmental issues and concerns of the area and not just do patch work.

As an organization that works directly with its beneficiaries, we are deeply honoured to be partnering with Food Plants Solutions in creating this food guide. We believe that the field guide will educate the Filipino people on the nutritional value and importance of the local plants. In support with this partnership we help families to establish their own backyard garden to lower their food cost and help fight hunger and malnutrition in our community.

Fresh Food For Families

FPS Fresh Food for Families

A workshop to support migrants to learn how to grow, nurture, harvest and prepare nutritious fresh foods in Tasmania.

Food growing and multiculturalism?  Yes!

Saturday, April 6th, the Tasmanian group, Fresh Food for Families conducted a second workshop, this year with the Ethiopian community.  It was based on the successful 2018 workshop which was run with the Nepalese community.

The organising committee is fortunate to have had three members of the Ethiopian community join us, so that translation of materials and recruitment of participants were streamlined. We are grateful to them for helping us to understand a little more of their culture.  One of those members has now joined Rotary.

Also exciting is that one of the sessions was led by a leader in the Nepalese community who graduated from the first program.  We were so excited to have he and his wife join us on the day, and we think that this is a wonderful example of putting back and of multiculturalism.

The format is the same as for the previous workshop and can be found in the Event Guidelines which is on our website. https://foodplantsolutions.org/programs/fresh-food-for-families/