Let's give girls training for a vibrant future

The Agros Farm Program, also known as the Vocational Skills Training Program, is a year long agriculture training course for teen girls of various backgrounds. The greenhouses, funded and supported by the American Foundation for Children with Aids, are the keystone element of the program. The course goes beyond just a year of practical education, it has the potential to change a girl, a family, and a community for a lifetime.

Take the story of Nina, an 18-year-old mother to an almost two-year-old little boy. She came to the Sandra Jones Center as a pregnant child, without a support system, a completed education, or a job; all with a mouth to feed on the way. After giving birth to a healthy baby, while under the care of gogos (the Center’s caregivers) and with the support of fellow teen mothers, Nina began working and learning as a part of the Agros Farm Program.

While she labored in the greenhouses and fields learning all there is to know about gardening, poultry rearing, produce markets, and more, baby Musa was being cared for less than 100 meters away. Rarely do young mothers get such an opportunity to raise their child while also learning skills to sustain themselves and their family for the future. Instead of having to resolve herself to a life that is often destined for girls in her circumstance; labeled as destitute, abused, impoverished, uneducated and hopeless, Nina has risen above and beyond.

Nina graduated from the training program this past December and is now a proud holder of a certificate stating her completion of excellence in a variety of agricultural skills. What this certificate represents for Nina goes beyond what the paper says. Yes, she can pluck a chicken in a matter of minutes, grow cabbages the size of her child, and trench a greenhouse in an afternoon… but she also can say with a head lifted high, that her infant has never known hunger. In a country were malnutrition and economic instability is commonplace, this is a feat to be celebrated!

Musa and his mother currently still live at the Sandra Jones Center where Nina works in the kitchen and helps in the gardens along with raising her quickly growing little boy. In working at the very place she came for refuge at her lowest, she has gone from provided for, to giving provision to other children just like herself. With the veggies she has grown in the AFCA greenhouses and the countless slices of bread she has buttered; she has helped to feed over 80 children 3 times a day. When the time does come for Nina and Musa to go out into the world on their own, she is prepared. She has a qualification that is sought after by employers who once wouldn’t cast her a second glance. She has the ability and the confidence to go after her goals. She is and will continue to be her son’s provider.

How many girls are like Nina? hardworking, intelligent, strong and determined, yet relegated by circumstances outside of their control? There are countless. And these are exactly the sort of women that the Agros Farm Program is made for. Our purpose goes beyond how to plant a cabbage seed; we hope to be the greenhouse: a safe place to be watered and rooted. To grow, To flourish. Thanks to the American Foundation for Children with Aids, this is actually possible! Stories like Nina and Musa’s no longer have to be the exception to a tragic rule… it can be one of many examples for others to follow.

The team here at the American Foundation for Children with AIDS thanks you for supporting this project and the work we do for the children in Africa.  If you would like to learn even more about what we do or how you can meet some of the children you have helped, please contact Tanya Weaver at tweaver@AFCAids.org.