Follow us on:

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube

Archive -Fishing and Agriculture

What better food to eat than what you produce yourself? |11 March 2016

 

A home gardening programme targeting women was launched on Wednesday at the residence of the British high commissioner at Bel Air.

The aim of this programme is to help women improve their food security and also their livelihood through sales of excess produce from their gardens, or products made from local fruits and vegetables such as jams, pickles and cakes.

Seychelles Breweries Ltd (SBL) has partnered with two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – Women in Action and Solidarity (Waso) and Sustainability for Seychelles (S4S) – to deliver the gardening programme, as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme for 2016. 

This project forms part of the Diageo (Seychelles Breweries’ parent company) global campaign to help women improve livelihood, as well as save water. 

During a series of training sessions being coordinated by Waso, women taking part will learn the basics of home gardening with the help of expert backyard gardening trainer Gabriel Prudence, who ran the Ifad Clissa home gardening workshops in communities in 2015. 

The women will also be given assistance to set up simple home rainwater harvesting systems with the help of the S4S and a group of plumbing students from the Seychelles Institute of Technology (Sit) who are part of a new Water Warriors youth programme also being supported by SBL.

The sessions are expected to start at the end of this month and those who are interested can contact Waso on 2781560.

The British high commissioner, Caron Rohsler, is very enthusiastic about the initiative and offered to host the launch event in the garden of her residence, where she is setting up her own home garden.

She said this is a fantastic project that is bringing together the skills and expertise of a wide range of institutions.

“It can be enjoyable, and it can add healthy outcome to your family and it can be economically a good thing to be doing,” she said.

The chairperson of Waso, Rose-Marie Elizabeth, said food security is one of Waso’s main objective.

“What better food to eat than the food you produce yourself? The healthy food that you don’t need to ask whether there is chemical in it and so forth, it’s the food that you grow...,” she said.

She is encouraging women to join and benefit from the training.

“Nutrition is one way of keeping yourself healthy and women have to ensure that they are in good health, so grow your own food,” she said.

The ceremony was followed by a short demonstration by the project instructor, Mr Prudence, to get a feel of what will go on in the training sessions.

Those present were representatives from Waso, Sustainability for Seychelles, SBL, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Citizens Engagement Platform of Seychelles (Ceps) and Sit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

» Back to Archive