By Kaitlyn Grigsby-Hall | Project Leader & CREATE! Grants Manager
“CREATE! has given us the hope of development! Before we partnered with CREATE!, we had never grown vegetables all year and we did not know how to earn a living. CREATE! came at the right time because Back Samba Dior really needed help.” – Anta
What a difference in just one year! CREATE! first partnered with the community of Back Samba Dior a little over a year ago. With your support, we rehabilitated an abandoned well and taught women in the village how to grow vegetables year-round. Now, just a short time later, women like Anta in Back Samba Dior are growing and harvesting hundreds of pounds of eggplants, tomatoes, turnips, and other vegetables.
In Back Samba Dior and throughout rural Senegal, the months of November through February are the coolest of the year. Women take advantage of the cooler temperatures to grow a larger variety of vegetables – including mint, lettuce, and other leafy greens - that are less tolerant of hot temperatures. Over the past few months, they have harvested hundreds of pounds of fruits and vegetables that they eat, share with neighbors and family, and sell on the market.
Access to abundant water year-round has transformed the lives of women in our partner communities as well. Oumy of Thieneba says, “Before my community partnered with CREATE! I worked only in the rainy season, and when I needed money, I sold a part of my harvest in the market.” For the rest of the year, Oumy would buy vegetables from the market several miles away in Gossas. Because she supports a family of 8, this could be incredibly challenging and expensive at times.
Now that Oumy has been working with CREATE!’s technicians over the last several years, however, she feels much more self-sufficient in her ability to grow food year-round. “I’ve memorized all the gardening techniques we were taught, and I’m able to do it all without help,” she says. “The vegetable cultivation is my favorite CREATE! program, because it was very difficult to get it in the community before, but now it is always available to us.”
Your continued support has helped CREATE! transform the lives of women like Anta and Oumy in rural Senegal. Your donations make a difference! Want to learn more about CREATE!? Stay updated by signing up for our email list, becoming our friend on Facebook, and checking out our blog!
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