Moshe, TZ – Social Enterprise Tupendane’s team assists schools, and plants banana trees for its own sustainability – 30 Sep 2022

Tupendane’s team of seven people has been continuously improving an Easy, Efficient, Effective and Enjoyable (4E) repeatable Grow-own-Breakfast process for the local schools’ teachers, children and volunteering parents. This has been an important part of the schools’ taking more ownership of the program and doing the major part of the process with fewer Tupendane mentoring visits to the schools.

The schools communities are benefiting from more ownership of the program, because it is becoming more sustainable and giving them more independence. Meanwhile, the Tupendane team members are using the reduced time spent on school visits to take more ownership for their own sustainability. The team is investing the saved time on their own income generating farming at their Kahe pilot farm.

The team has just started to plant banana trees at the pilot farm after learning from working at Mwangaria Primary school’s flooding farm. The team learned that strong taller banana trees survive floods better when flood water passes between them for a few weeks. This means that most Banana trees are surviving, The team are also planning to plant seasonal organic vegetables between the banana trees that will be harvested to feed their own families and for selling at the market. The Income from the market sales will enable Tupendane to start saving money for team salaries and so start to become more independent and eventually more sustainable.

The team is facing the challenge at the pilot farm of needing capital for investing in a better irrigation infrastructure, various agricultural inputs and a goat raising business which the team believes is a perfect part of organic growing by eating grasses and providing manure for the banana trees and vegetables. The team is testing a raised goat banda and so far it works perfectly protecting the goats from the flooding.

Saving time by reducing the number of mentoring visits is strengthening Tupendane team’s sustainability and enabling it to assist more schools in the future.