Mkyashi, TZ – School vegetable gardens are commercial gardens during the holidays to assist sustaining Grow-own-Breakfast (GOB) Program – Dec 2023

The Lishe Bora team, in collaboration with students and teachers of both Lasso and Kisuluni primary schools, has assisted the school children to succesfully grow vegetables for their breakfast since the first quarter drought of 2023. The quality organic harvests have been well fed to the children and teachers, and their improved health and academic performance has been a witness of the benefits of organic growing.

During this Holiday season of Christimas and Happy New Year the children have gone for a break and hence the Lishe Bora team took a commercial approach of washing the current vegetable harvests for selling in the market place.

The December market was limited by a short rain season, which favours most families’ vegetable garden harvests and results in low vegetable prices. Despite this, the vegetable businesss has already earned 84,000 TZS / US$ 34, which is going to contribute to some of the operational costs for the 2024 Grow own Breakfast budget. This earning contribution is one of the small step towards achieving sustainability for the program.

To overcome the low price challenge, Lishe Bora is taking some actions aimed at expanding the market by allowing their newly established Kilimanjaro Catering busines to become one the largest buyers of the vegetables. This week the business bought 7,000 TZS / US$3 vegetables from Lasso Primary school gardens. We hope that in future as Kilimanjaro Catering is growing bigger it will contribute more to the market and also we will be encouraging other catering businesses to do the same.