Canada
The primary Food & Water security projects Bopoma Villages
They Started with Training their oats
Beginning in 2014 and into 2016 two young adults Victor Norest and Tapera Mukachana, engaged in a co-op training program in organic farming provided by the Thrive Institute (formerly Organics 4 Orphans) in Kenya. The course provided three months of training at Thrive's site in Kenya followed up with a Thrive instructor mentoring the students on site back in Zimbabwe and then back to Kenya and so on. They officially graduated as OATS (Organic Agriculture Trainers) two and half years later
immediately the Trainees taught and mentored the villagers
An Organic Vegetable Based Diet
The initial issue was convincing the villagers the incredible value of a nutrient rich vegetable diet relative to one based on one that is heavily based corn maze.
Each Village created their own Community Garden
Over the ensuing years the villagers literally created hundreds of community garden plots. A community garden consists of multiple 5'x20' double dug plots. Double Dug means the first foot of soil is removed and then this is followed up by digging up and loosening the next foot of soil. Then the original soil is put back in but now fortified with organic compost. This compostion allows the roots to explode in the soil resulting in enormous yields. If the plots are not stepped and left in this state on they will last in this condition for up to seven years and yield multiple crops.
All fifteen villages received their own bore hole
As one village farmer said to me in Indonesia, "If I have water, I have hope!" Bopoma oversaw the installation of fifteen bore holes (Spring Rain's funding covered thirteen wells). Initially the bore holes not only supplied good drinking water but they were used to hydrate the growing community gardens.
Rain Water Harvesting
Rain Capturing Channels
In due time the proliferation of the community gardens strained the bore hole's water capacity. To ameliorate this problem the Bopoma Villagers installed "miles" of channels to harvest the down pours prevalent in the two month Rainy Season by directing the previously destructive run off to soaking pits. This process results in the water migrating under the plant's roots that then literally holding the water in the soil only to be used as needed through the growing season also know as the dry season.
Reforestation
Fruit Trees
Another ambitous endeavour to upgrade the area's diet resulted in excess of 10,000 fruit trees being planted.
Zimbabwe's Farmer of the year 2023
One of the most unexpected rewards of Bopoma Village's agriculture initiative came when one of the villagers was rewarded with the Farmer of the Year Award.
The effect of his rain water harvesting efforts
His prize for his rain water harvesting efforts -- a tractor