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By Annonciata Byukusenge
Bicumbi community says that they stand for fighting malnutrition with sustainable solutions after support provided by the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Food Security Project (SAIP) in 2019.
Véréna Mukankubana is a community health worker in the Bicumbi cell, Mwurire sector Rwamagana district. Before collaborating with SAIP there is many cases of malnutrition in this area.
“For 100 households, 20 households only had kids in well-being. Those 20 households had kitchen gardens, and knew to feed their kids nutritious food.”
She added that SAIP helped this village change its mindset. “The majority of families had kids suffering from malnutrition had food in their homes, but they had the culture of selling the production, fruit, and domestic animals without thinking to their kids. Another party is for people who had food at home and did not know how to feed their kids.”
In 2019, SAIP started to work with the Bicumbi community. The criteria for being a beneficiary of the SAIP project are to be in the first and the second category of social economic and to have kids suffering from malnutrition.
“SAIP trained parents on how to feed kids nutritious food from the products we have at home, to design a kitchen garden and it provided us the chicken for eggs to our kids.”
Uwamariya is one of the beneficiaries of this project. She talks about the improvement of malnutrition at the Early Childhood Development (ECD) center at Bicumbi ECD of G.S Bicumbi in Mwurire Sector.
“We consider SAIP as the savior of our children. I had a kid of two years and he had six kilograms (6kg). I was not able to feed him even his oldest they were stunted because of poverty. SAIP gave me the chicken, now my kids eat eggs, gave me the fruit trees, no malnutrition in my family.”
Apart of ending malnutrition in her family, the livestock also improved. “I started to participate in saving groups, now I have three pigs and I bought a farm.”
Issa Ndungutse is a SAIP coordinator in the Rwamagana district. He says that from 2019 SAIP has invaluable meaning in this area.
“SAIP provided our farmers the solar panels to cope with climate change and to improve the production, of fruit trees like mangoes, avocados, and papayas. For this Early Childhood Development (ECD), it provided kitchen materials.”
The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) through the World Bank fund the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Food Security Project (SAIP). The project is implemented under RAB’s Single Project Implementation Unit (SPIU).
