Ngara, TZ – SODAT team trains to start garden shop – 30 Sep 2014

For two weeks in September the SODAT gardening team visited the Moshi and Kilimanjaro area to continue their training in preparation for starting their own organic vegetable garden shop in Ngara, Kagera Region, Tanzania.

The team of three visited the Moshi/Kilimanjaro area and spent one week with Tupendane and one week with Lishe Bora. Both organizations were happy to host the hard-working visitors, who contributed to their hosts’ projects through hands-on learning.

In Moshi, the team camped out at Tupendane’s pilot farm while they learned about program marketing, best-effort gardens, compost production, organic foliar sprays, family mentoring, and other critical elements of starting a gardening program and helping families become food self-reliant.

After a week of training in Moshi the team moved to Mt. Kilimanjaro to finish their training with Lishe Bora.  The SODAT team worked with the Lishe Bora team and families to build two new organic vegetable gardens. During the building of the second garden the SODAT team led the building effort, proving that they knew and understood all of the best-effort practices of building new gardens.

Now the team has returned home to Ngara and has been discussing the project with families and preparing to build new gardens. Seven families have already submitted applications for home gardens, and the team hasn’t even built the example garden at the primary school.