In this post our
newest JWOC Programme Manager, Konthea Mean, tells us about the Home Gardens
Project and the monitoring work of our Volunteer Community Facilitators in the
field.
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Seedlings are started by the group leaders in each village
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During the first month working as a Community Liaison and Assistance
(CLA) Programme Manager for JWOC, I
am really pleased with what I
have learned and participated with the team. In this program there are 12
Volunteer Community Facilitators working with me, who are JWOC scholarship
students. Three of them work on Saturday and the rest work on Sunday. We have
been working in two villages - Duon Un and Ta Kam in Duon Keo Commune where we
do the Home Gardens Project.
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One of our beneficiaries, Hea, with bitter gourd
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There are 25 people in each
village who join the activity and they all were trained by the expert on how to
make a home garden. With one group leader in each village, we provided them 5 kinds of seeds: tomato, cucumber, string
bean, bitter gourd and eggplant. However, most of them choose only two or
three kinds of seeds to plant because their gardens are small.
To follow up and assist in the project, we set up a schedule to monitor their activities in each village two
times a month. Because our team is divided between Saturday and Sunday teams, and
everyone wants to get involved in both places, we monitor each village in
rotation. As we do the monitoring process, we found our beneficiaries in both
villages paid attention very well on their gardens. They applied all the
methods they learned from the training to real practice. Their plants are good
and now most of our beneficiaries are collecting the vegetables for eating and
for sale in the market.
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During our monitoring we found
there are some diseases and insects destroying the crops. To solve these
problems we conducted research and discussed with the trainer to provide
solutions to our beneficiaries. Up to now all those problems are solved and
almost 90% of the gardens are successful.
One of our beneficiaries, Mao, is
a 62 year old woman in Ta Kam Village. She planted many kinds of crops in her
garden and takes care of them every day. Unfortunately one day, when she was
cooking in the kitchen, there were a few cows got into her garden and ate all
the crops. We encouraged her to buy more seeds on her own and replant, to make
a fence around the garden and be more careful. This week we visited Mao and saw
her smiling face because her plants are growing well and will produce
vegetables soon. We really appreciate her for all her effort.
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Konthea and Mao in the garden
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Even though the JWOC Home Gardens
Project in these two villages is going to finish soon, I expect to conduct this
project in other villages in order to help more beneficiaries in the rural
communities to increase their gardening skills to grow nutritious food and
improve their economic situation.
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Healthy tomato plants
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Healthy cucumbers seem to be the easiest to grow
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Garden in Ta Kam Village with good fence to keep the animals
out
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