Project Title: Promoting Composting and Kitchen Gardening for Safe and Sustainable Food Production in Kasese Area

Problem Statement The farmers in this region of kasese have for a considerable period practiced mono-cropping and over relying on cash crop- tea. Those doing any other kind of farming are poorly equipped and use non sustainable practices responsible for loss of soil fertility, environmental degradation, unsafe and food insecurity. When there is no food the proceeds from the cash crops means very little as most of it goes to food and because it is from the market, it is usually of poor nutritional quality as one goes for what is affordable and available. Despite having nationally revered tea as the cash crop, the farmers are small scale in nature which means that their incomes are meager and hardly enough for initiating other economic initiatives. This is worsened during the dry seasons when the productivity of the ‘savior’ crop is lowest- translating to difficult livelihoods. Sad but true is that bought food stuffs are never satisfying, sometimes contaminated and low in quality due to such factors as financial, handling and time between picking and consumption. However this community has the capacity to use what is naturally theirs, ecologically develop its nutrition security and save money and if possible earn more from the family kitchen gardening initiatives. Rationale for the project Sustainable organic agriculture is a system of farming using local resources and skills to build long-term soil fertility, safe food and nutritional security as well as protect natural ecosystems. This project falls under our mission, which is to promoting sustainable development initiatives among the poor small scale farmers in Central region through participatory practices. This project approach proposes to use the farm resource management for soil fertility building and designed family gardening. It will impart knowledge and skills to the participating target beneficiaries, singling out composting and growing own food in family units as the means to achieving its goal. Using the compost in the family kitchen gardens relate the two best practices. It also calls for a careful integration of the farm resources, enterprises, encourages re-use and recycling thus diversifying the out put and benefits. i. Composting: One of the basic steps to fertility building is using the organic materials and ‘waste’ as raw materials for making quality natural fertilizer. These materials which include the plants remains, crop residues and livestock waste (manure and bio slurry), which will tactfully be incorporated to decompose and give nutrients-rich compost to be used in the family gardens. ii. Establishment of Kitchen Gardens: It is expected that every household learns how to establish and maintain a Kitchen garden. This garden should contain skillfully mixed and diverse crops including indigenous vegetables, cereals and root crops designed to provide balanced diet to the families. It ultimately will support and contribute to womencall centre Uganda’s vision of a just, self reliant rural community which is social-economic and environmentally conscious and sustainable. Its execution adds value to our mandate of building capacity to ensure communities continuous learning and practice of organic farming in Kasese. Our specific goals and specific objectives of the project Goal: Enhance communities’ nutrition and livelihood security by means of building Kasese farmer’s capacity to sustainably manage farm based resources Specific objectives: 1. Stimulate participatory farmers’ reflection upon their current farming and introduce a more sustainable; –diversified, low input, local and viable alternative 2. Train 1000 farmers in 50 groups of about 20 in composting and kitchen gardening with emphasis on sustainability in salutary nutrition production and self reliance. 3. Facilitate group-work and skills-handing over to the community for sustainability by means of follow ups and encouraging farmer-to-farmer learning and networking even with other agencies for their socio-economic progress. Activities 1. Mobilize the farmers kasese to increase awareness - Organize 20 groups 2. Induct and capacity building -Train 1, 000 farmers in the target area 3. Assist in practical adoption (Post training Follow up) 4. Establish enriched Kitchen Gardens 5. Farmer to farmer learning (Local Exchange visits) 6. Monitoring and Evaluation