Education Zimbabwe Project #20928

Train Primary Teachers in Conservation Agriculture

by Zimbabwe Educational Trust (ZET)

Project Report | Jan 26, 2023
Foundations for Farming January 2023 Update

By Andrew Jackson | Operations Manager

Chickens = eggs = healthy and money

Project update and exciting project announcement below

This quarter we’ve been back at Inyagui Primary school. Even though the main part of the project is now over we want to stay involved and make sure that outcomes are sustainable. While we were there we spoke to the Head Teacher and a number of others and checked out the maize crop and the chicken house. We also had a look at the record keeping to see what crops had been harvested, how many eggs had been produced and what was done with them, whether feeding students or helping the school buy much needed equipment. The students eat eggs every two weeks (we’ve encouraged a little more frequent if possible) and surplus have been sold for $380, meeting community needs. Chicken and egg production has doubled with over 4,000 eggs being produced since we started.

At the time of the visit, the school had established 360 cabbages, 7500 onions, 400 tomato plants and 5 beds of kale, all for the school kitchen. Also we heard that parents have been buying school crops and selling them on in the community for a profit. This means that more food is circulating in the local community addressing our goals around malnutrition and the profits are helping pay for student’s tuition fees. Win-win. There’s also big plans to add three more irrigated Pfumvudza plots to the farming activities so the school is really going from strength to strength. With more regular, nutritious food for the students, parents and the wider community plus the entrepreneurial activities supporting school budgets and developing the skills of the students we’re delighted with the situation.

Were also super excited to announce a new project with Ghuza primary starting NOW. This project will last two years and use an enhanced model to delvier more sustainable benefits addressing food insecurity malnutrition and building more resilience in the community against the effects of climate change. We can’t wait to get started and we’ll tell you more next time!!!

Cabbages for all

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Sep 23, 2022
Foundations for Farming Summer 2022 Update

By Andrew Jackson | Operations Manager

Inyaguwe support visit team assistance

This has been a particularly exciting quarter and we’re happy to present some of the evaluation findings from our work with Inyagwe Primary School. For a long time now (Covid presented some delays) we’ve been working together to teach conservation agriculture, helping to tackle food insecurity and build resilience against the growing effects of climate change.

“This project allows everyone in the community to earn money and have enough food.”

Mr N. Majogo, School Development Committee, Chairperson

Crop production over the course of the project has gone through the roof, here’s some highlights comparing 2020-2021.

Onions – up from 600 to 1,300, that’s 217% growth

Tomatoes up from 120kg to 400kg a growth of 333%

Sugar Beans – up from 10kgs to 60kgs a whopping 600%.

Maize – up from 150kgs to 1,750kg, a staggering 1,167%

To date, approximately 40 meals have been provided for each of the 398 students attending the school. Totalling 15,920 meals this is a great and substantial achievement but still falls a long way short of what is truly required. With the school aiming to give one meal per student, per day this requires 1,990 meals per week and we can see that approximately eight full weeks of food have been provided thus far. The great leap forward in capacity and relative to what they were able to produce/provide before is a true measure of the success of the project. This is further supported by feedback received from the Headmaster stating, “Yes, benefits were observed. It increased the school enrolment and minimized absenteeism.” A teacher goes on to note “Pupil’s participation in classwork has highly increased”.

There have been other benefits too but we’ll save some of that for next time…

Thanks to all our donors and supporters. Please help us spread the word, and raise more funds so we can keep up this life changing work.

School garden feeding bodies and minds

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May 27, 2022
Foundations for Farming Spring 2022 Update

By Andrew Jackson | Operations Manager

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