(MENAFN- EIN Presswire)
Ugandan boys gardening
Drip system
Cabbages after irrigation
Teaching horticultural skills in African villages
Nutrition is universal. Better skills in gardening and horticulture are better skills for life, no matter who you are or where you live.”” - Teresa Fogolini, Director of the Garden of Eatin' program
LIVERMORE, CA, UNITED STATES, February 3, 2025 /EINPresswire / -- Three San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits are partnering to help ensure food security to thousands of children in the east African country of Uganda.
They are The Global Uplift Project (TGUP) of Livermore, the Melissa Prandi Children Foundation (MPCF) in San Rafael, and the North Bay Children's Center (NBCC) of Novato.
The three have come together behind the“Sponsor a Village” campaign of MPCF and TGUP. Traditional international development focuses on a single project, for example, a classroom or a latrine. Sponsor a Village directs development help to an entire village.
One of the many Sponsor a Village projects is the“Garden of Eatin'”, a program from the North Bay Children's Center. Garden of Eatin' teaches children the importance of nutrition in life success. It teaches small-scale horticultural skills to thousands of children in the North Bay, and now, thousands more in Uganda.
At two Ugandan villages, Divine Dmabwe and Kinawa Aidah in the country's Luwero District, Garden of Eatin' was offered to thousands of primary school children. In both villages, schools' garden spaces were turned into teaching space as children grow the schools' garden. The vegetables they grow helps feed them.
Additionally, when the students take the skills home, to their families, they are expected to contribute to the feeding of another 4,500 people. All of this comes at no cost to the recipient communities.
According to Teresa Fogolini, Director of the Garden of Eatin' program at NBCC,“Nutrition is universal. Better skills in gardening and horticulture are better skills for life, no matter who you are or where you live.”
MPCF's Executive Director, Melissa Prandi, said,“The goal of Sponsor a Village is to increase the ability of Ugandan villages to support themselves. Garden of Eatin' is a central part of that mission, and it's working.”
More than 40,000 people have been helped by the Sponsor a Village program. Besides the Garden of Eatin', other elements of support include systems for delivering clean water, solar-based electricity, and vocational training in sewing and baking.
According to Robert Freeman, Executive Director of TGUP,“Helping an entire village, with multiple projects, increases the 'cross-pollination' of help. More people can help more people, when the help is common to all.”
“It's not only a more effective approach to international development, it's more cost-effective,” he said.
The data seem to bear this out. In more than 500 projects that TGUP has completed in 26 developing world countries, the cost per person helped averaged $.69, according to Freeman. In Sponsor a Village, the cost per person helped has averaged only $.49.
The three nonprofits expect to complete at least five additional Sponsor a Village projects in 2025.
TGUP and MPCF have also partnered in Uganda to keep adolescent girls in school.
They have jointly opened a sewing center to sew TGUP's Save a Girl TM (SaG) product. SaG is a set of washable, reusable sanitary pads that helps adolescent girls manage their period so they can stay in school. The two nonprofits have made and distributed more than 8,000 SaG kits in Uganda since 2023.
The Global Uplift Project is a 501c3 non-profit located in Livermore, CA. It has built more than 500 small-scale, high-impact infrastructure projects in 26 of the world's poorest countries. Over their lives, those projects will help more than 3.1 million of the poorest people in the world have just a slightly better chance in life.
The Melissa Prandi Children Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit headquartered in San Rafael, CA. It works to improve lives and economic opportunities for worthy communities in Uganda, especially women and children. It has sponsored college scholarships for dozens of girls and implemented vocational training centers in some of the poorest slums of Uganda.
North Bay Children's Center is the creator of the Garden of Eatin', a nationally-recognized program providing nutritional education and horticultural training to children of all ages. It operates in 14 North-Bay locations including Novato, Petaluma, Healdsburg, Sonoma, Rohnert Park, and Santa Rosa.
Robert Freeman
The Global Uplift Project
+1 650-575-3434
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