Meru Women’s Garden Project

Margaret Clark Advocacy APD & SI Middlesbrough#soroptimists are proud to be supporting @Childdotorg & Great Big Supper Club #TGBSCLUBMeru Garden Project https://t.co/ZuA6ODdE3S

Over the next three years Soroptimist Clubs are supporting the Meru Women’s Garden Project (MWGP), a collaboration with Child.org, that will educate, empower and enable women and girls in Meru County, Kenya.

The project provides sustainable gardening techniques and tools, enabling women to become mentors and pioneers of agricultural sustainability within the community. It will also educate girls on their rights, empowering them to stand up to damaging cultural practices like female genital mutilation (FGM).

By providing economic opportunities to women and girls, MWGP will achieve long term change by strengthening entire communities; improving the lives and opportunities for children and generations to come.

Meru District is in Tigania East with a population of 136,000. 90% live in rural areas with HIV/AIDs prevalent in the region.

Meru Women’s Garden Project will support some of the poorest women-led households in Kenya, and is entirely focussed on providing opportunities to women and girls who may never otherwise be given the chance to earn an income, and gives them status within their community. It fully embraces the three key areas at the heart of our Programme Focus Goals – Educate, Empower and Enable. Improved food production and education will support women and girls to transform their lives and those of others through a process of cascade learning and mentoring thereby reducing poverty, improving health and increasing employment.

The following data gives a clear indication of the need for this project:

• 41% of women and girls are grossly or borderline malnourished
• 43% live below the poverty line of £1 per day, with more in rural areas
• 55% live a hand to mouth existence in agriculture using methods which degrade the land
• 93% use local trees for firewood, impacting hugely on deforestation
• 22% have no formal education
• 11% complete secondary education
• 8% achieve minimum levels for literacy compared to 85% in Nairobi
• 9% achieve minimum levels for numeracy compared to 87% in Nairobi

The Project aims to:

Educate women to increase their knowledge and skills so that they can use the most efficient, organic methods for food production to:

• reduce extreme hunger by becoming self-sufficient with sustainable gardens at home
• improve girls’ attendance and achievement in secondary school by creating breakfast clubs and sustainable food gardens, so that they are not hungry and are better able to learn

Empower women through education to find a voice within their community to:

• raise their standard of living above the poverty line
• gain the respect of elders and others, achieve equal representation and take on more prominent roles
• create productive and decent employment by engaging women and girls with leadership skills to take on training and mentoring roles

Enable women leading a household to create their own employment through growing and selling their crops, or as tutors and mentors to:

• significantly reduce extreme poverty by enabling and promoting income generating activities
• promote opportunities to cascade training, form farming cooperatives and establish mentoring
• increase local women’s share of paid employment