WORKSHOP URBAN MICRO-FARMING AND HIV-AIDS Johannesburg/Cape Town, South Africa 15-26 August 2005

COMMUNITY SCHOOL BASED URBAN AGRICULTURE PROJECT OF PCI

By Joseph Tembo PROJECT CONCERN INTERNATIONAL ZAMBIA (PCI) Lusaka, Zambia

July 2005

INTRODUCTION TO PCI-ZAMBIA AND ITS ACTIVITIES Project Concern International (PCI) is an international not for profit organization dedicated to saving the lives of children and families by preventing disease and providing access to clean water and nutritious food. PCIs office in Zambia is one of 11 PCI offices around the world. Together, our mission is to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development. PCI is involved in improving livelihoods of communities and their health status. Its programme has the following components: HIV/AIDS prevention, (capacity building for) Home Based Care, Positive Living With Aids-ART, OVC nutrition and education, community school based nutrition and agriculture programme. The community based agriculture programme is designed to expand number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Zambia that have access to quality services through sustainable, community-based programs that effectively reduce their vulnerability. In 2003, PCI launched the first major school feeding program in urban Lusaka, Zambia. The program has rapidly evolved from an emergency response to the countrys food crisis into a long-term approach for meeting the most critical needs of orphans and vulnerable children. PCI Zambia has been providing support to urban vulnerable community schools and households with orphans and vulnerable children through the Community School Feeding Project. There are currently 122 sites (either community schools/drop in centres/residential centres) providing education, food, recreation, life skills and HIV/AIDS education and psychosocial support to 70,000 children every school day. Currently, the project is being funded through the United Nations World Food Programme and USAID as part of the urban intervention initiative which also includes monitoring of behaviour change in community programmes. As part of PCIs exit strategy for this project it was proposed that a School Garden Project is introduced in at least 60% of the beneficiary sites as a pilot phase. Community schools do not have the capacity to mobilise resources to continue with the feeding programme, which has seen improved nutrition status in children and their households and those affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Through this initiative, extreme vulnerable community families have benefited in receiving food rations as supplement just to improve on the household nutrition levels. Which means that with the exit of the programme would have a knock-on effect to the community as a whole. The aim of the School Garden project is to empower site management (community schools) with resources (from production to marketing of produce) to manage their own school income earning projects (IGAs) and the feeding programmes respectively. The potential output benefits from the project will include: Provision of agricultural knowledge to pupils for increased productivity. Facilitation/formation of village level organizations (e.g. cooperatives). Improving effectiveness and relevance of general education through integration of practical skills in addition to theory. Improving nutritional status of by providing supplementary enriched school meals produced by the schools.

Facilitate spread of agricultural technology by using community school production units as demonstration sites. To establish the actual requirements for the school gardening project to commence a needs assessment was conducted in October 2003. The following are the findings from the survey: Access to extension services was three times higher in rural schools (75%) than compared to urban schools (28.6%) There were different approaches to conducting agricultural activities in the schools: a) Low level gardening b) Intensive agricultural production and skills training, c) Integrated Community Schools and womens group. Most popular crops identified by the community schools included Chinese cabbage, rape, tomatoes and onions followed by carrots, fruits, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, egg plant, green pepper, beans maize, okra and mushrooms Schools also favoured animal keeping for both food and income generation, especially poultry keeping and pig keeping followed by goats and rabbits. Community schools identified need for support in the following specific areas: * Input support: seeds fertilizers, pesticides and another agro-chemicals* Technical back stopping (manpower to advise during production process* Information on production technology (in the form of pamphlets, information packs and manuals to be used as guides).

The project provides the following support to the selected community schools that are to benefit from the programme: group mobilisation, capacity building (management skills, technical skills), technical assistance in crop production and animal husbandry infrastructure support, A total of 27 community schools have been identified for the project on the basis of a participatory assessment -including community school teachers, leaders and government officials from relevant sectors (such as the ministries of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Health and Community development) of the following selection criteria: availability of adequate land and ownership, availability of water sources for irrigation, availability of labour and Identified markets. A final role-out assessment is currently under way in a few additional fields that were seen lacking in previous assessment (psycho-social; gender; environment)

LESSONS LEARNT Lessons learnt during the pilot phase to-date were as follows: Organisational issues The economic hardships, together with illnesses and death due to HIV-AIDS, have brought poverty and misery in the communities which increasingly depend on a few healthy members for its development. The community school children have similar conditionality which has led them to be at these community schools. These children are mostly orphans whose parents or guardians died from HIV/AIDS. The orphans are usually traumatised with different experiences and hence the environment they grow up in. Some children have both parents and guardians with HIV/AIDS. And as we identify these households the project has set aside family rations to assist in the food supplements at homesteads through the Home based care programme support which also encourages the patients to administer ART and TB treatments. The children are encouraged to continue education by placing them to the community schools through the child school placement programme. Most community organisations participating in the project are loosely organized groups consisting for over 80 % of poor households with poor managerial skills (leadership, record keeping). Apart from the school student labour force -who are the main custodians of the projects- it is the community contribution and participation to labour which will see the success of the development programme. CBOs and other organisations are considered as partners to the programme and therefore support in terms of labour is part of the contribution. Other members of the community could contribute voluntarily. The community is encouraged to be involved in the activities as they take up part ownership of the community school projects. The community groups still need continued sensitization on gender and the behavioural changes needed in order to yield positive results, since men tend to be more on the receiving side, whereas the women are expected to do all the production work to earn the income for the household. Access to land and Water Most of the community schools own some land. Peri-urban and rural schools own larger portions of communally owned land than community schools in urban areas. The latter therefore are more restricted in the types of agriculture they can engage in. Most of them focus on poultry and gardening activities. About 70% out of the community schools assessed have available water sources, such as boreholes, wells and streams. Water is very critical for agricultural production both in crop production as well as poultry and livestock production. Rain fall in these areas is erratic and unreliable. Crops as fresh vegetables require adequate water supply to produce quality crops for markets that would give a good price (chain shops or super markets). That is why availability of water resources at the community schools was made one of the selection criteria. Through the partnership with UNICEF about 11 schools had boreholes installed to remove the scaling water and sanitation problems. The project intends to provide small scale irrigation facilities as part of the community level infrastructure and provide technical and extension support on irrigation and water utilisation.

Production issues - Integrated farming The mix of crops grown and animals reared should be adequate for income generating as well as for enhancing food security and proper nutrition. Combining livestock with production of fresh vegetables savings can be realized on the cost of production. The animal manure can replace costly chemical fertilizers; poultry droppings act as supplement to livestock feed and are also good for soil fertility. The excess and wastes from the fruit and vegetable production can be used for livestock feeding. Institutional Aspects Urban agriculture projects that target good health and community development require good cooperation and coordination between various organisations with a mandate in food security and nutrition, home based care, ARTs and food supplements to families with HIV/AIDS patients, etcetera. With figures of 5 out of 10 pregnant women are positive with the HIV/AIDS virus. This clearly shows that there is need for all players in the fight of HIV/AIDS and other stakeholders to combine forces and overcome the pandemic. However, all too often still Government and NGO interventions duplicate or distort each others development efforts and their development approaches are often conflicting (e.g. on this issue of subsidies, handouts and commercial services) Many groups experienced problems with late delivery of inputs and therefore their planting does not synchronize well with the agriculture calendar leading to lower yields. Establishment of partnerships and good coordination with Cooperatives, Government and NGOs may assure timely delivery of the inputs needed. Marketing of surpluses is often hampered by gaps in technical and market information, production of uneconomic quantities and lack of adequate marketing channels. Many groups encountered problems to increase production due to lack of access to reliable sources of credit and/or high interest rates discouraging investment. The programme seeks to attract more support from financial houses to provide the required financial support or credit to the community initiatives. HIV-AIDS The community school programme has to spear head a number of forums that will bring together stakeholders in order to identify their specific roles in awareness creation and providing services to OVCs and those affected by HIV/AIDS including the distribution of ARVs in the communities. There is need to improve/increase the reach in disseminating of HIV/AIDS and other IEC materials, if we are to succeed in reducing the spread of the pandemic and those affected. Sustainability and Upscaling Schools realise that they have very little or no support to expect from organisations that are designed to provide support. The community school agriculture based programmes provide a shinning hope and encourage operating efficiently and effectively. As the schools are empowered to generate income, the community as whole shall be stimulated to equally engage in projects that will earn them a better living.

A process of mapping the community schools is vital as we need to track and monitor progression and performance of these schools. This shall also assist in the information dissemination to stakeholders and other international partners, clearly showing the impact of the support; were more support is required; and those that have graduated. Schools that reflect potential in the project management of the IGAs will be given the opportunity to increase their funding allocation as this will encourage a positive impact on the income generation and also speed up the emulation process to other community school, as model schools. The initiative also shall attract other spheres of the economy to take up the challenge of investing in the Community schools as they are a registered institution to do business with. The possibilities are many as long as school management remains consistent and focused on attaining economic sense out of the IGAs and ploughing into the business. PCI intends to bring this initiative to other areas which would be operating under programmes with similar goals, with pilot school gardens in the first area providing a model for the other schools in other districts.