Stories From The Field: Women’s Empowerment
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MetroFresh’s 2020 DIG Garden ~ Ziguinchor, Senegal

In 2019 at a DIG Cocktails and Castoffs event, MetroFresh, a local Atlanta restaurant, encouraged their community to help sponsor a DIG garden in Senegal. They have previously sponsored a garden in Kenya and Uganda and this year they wanted to spread the seeds of transformation in Senegal. Their support has sustainably equipped 13 uniquely vulnerable families in the city of Ziguinchor, Senegal to become food secure, nutritionally rich, climate resilient, and economically secure. Here are some of the stories

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Finding ways to limit post-harvest loss during COVID

The immediate effects of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition in Kenya cannot be under estimated. The restrictions in movement, closure of hotels and schools which act as a market for many farmers, and lack of supply for farm inputs pose a critical challenge to almost every farmer. The effect is much more devastating to low income households and communities that already face serious challenges such as HIV, drought or flooding and poor access to essential services. DIG’s program that

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Maureen Oboch – Orange Sweet Potato Entrepreneur

“DIG brought me up from a level no one else would have done, I leant a number of techniques that have enables me to succeed even in other projects, I have done all these because DIG opened my potential in farming, DIG connected me to Ministry of Agriculture and I got connected further to CIP. For sure my life has improved beyond what anyone expected.” – Maureen Oboch Maureen Oboch first joined DIG’s program back in 2016. She is from

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Sabina

Sabina Onyango has been a member of the Ny Karachuonyo HIV support group in Western Kenya for several years. She, like others in her group, are well versed in the important role nutrition plays in their otherwise compromised health. In 2015, seeking more feasible solutions to improve their nutrition, her highly motivated group sought out access to DIG’s nutrition sensitive agriculture training. Over the 5- month training, Sabina became increasingly excited about what she was learning and quickly began implementing

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Focused on Tomorrow’s Future

A 27 year old Salome Anyango rejoiced when she gave birth to twins on Dec 13th, 2016. Denis, a boy, and Maureen, a girl, are now 2 years and 2 months old. At the time of their birth, she felt blessed with two at once but knew life would be busier than expected as she added the twins alongside her other four children. Salome struggled to supply enough breastmilk to meet both babies needs, and while the twins provided twice as many smiles, they also needed twice the support.

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DIG Deeper: Batwa Program Entering Year 2

After getting on the ground in November 2016, DIG spent two months undergoing an intensive site assessment through a baseline study, stakeholder analysis, committee and leadership meetings, crop viability study, building a team, and fine tuning the implementation model.

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Follow the Leader

Sabina Onyango is a member of a highly motivated HIV support group in Western Kenya. After seeing DIG's impact in the region, her group expressed an interest for DIG to work with them on sustainable agriculture initiatives for small holder farmers that also have a nutritional impact on people living with HIV.

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Make the Market Come to You

With a growing number graduated DIG farmers who are seeing their small vegetable plots as an entrepreneurial opportunity, DIG decided to established an organic vegetable stall at our partner hospital, Lwala Community Alliance (LCA), to create a new link to the local market economy.

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A Young Mother Stepping Up

Through a partnership with the Lwala Community Alliance (LCA) in North Kamagambo, Kenya, DIG met and started working with a young woman named Eunice. LCA had been assisting her through their Out of School Mentoring for Girls program. Recently widowed and only 26 years old, Eunice was left to care single-handedly for her four children, ages ten, four, two and one.  She has a lot stacked against her.  She knows that at any moment her late husband’s brothers could legally

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Budding Businesses – A Story of a Elizabeth Omiti

Elizabeth Achieng Omiti is a 52-year-old DIG-trained farmer in Migori County, Kenya. She is a widow, a mother of three daughters and two sons. She is also the sole provider for five grandchildren who were left with her by their mother several years ago.   Before DIG came to the area, Elizabeth was growing sugarcane and maize exclusively. She struggled daily to put food on her table, and pay her grandchildren’s school fees. Sugarcane was what her husband had always

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What it Takes to End Hunger

By Maggie Black   Vida Aooko Bitta, 30 years old and mother of four, is one of a DIG (Development in Gardening) team of community facilitators in Rongo District, Western Kenya. What she and the team are trying to do is transform the diet, improve the well-being and fill the pocket-books of local farming families. Many of these are among the 240 million Africans who regularly go hungry. Vida’s home is just a mile away from the Lwala community hospital

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Local Facilitator: Sarah Obonyo

Meet one of DIG’s stars and amazing Local Facilitators, Sarah Obonyo.    Sarah is the mother of 4 beautiful children and wife to a loving and supportive husband. She lives in Rongo in Western Kenya and has a passion for learning. While Sarah never finished secondary school she is incredibly intelligent and has proven to be a more than capable teacher and an irreplaceable member of the DIG team in Kenya.    Sarah started working for DIG last year after she proved herself to be

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