Program
GHI’s program is designed to enhance long-term food security, decrease malnutrition, foster economic development, and support effective HIV/AIDS care, and treatment. Improved nutrition will allow antiretroviral drugs to work more effectively.
GHI’s program comprises three integrated components:
(1) Garden cooperatives for high-nutrient crops
(2) Education and training on sustainable agriculture, animal husbandry, and nutrition
(3) Income generation through crop, animal, and seed sale
Trained in Biointensive farming techniques, GHI’s agronomists facilitate workshops with garden participants, combining demonstrations and education about sustainable agricultural techniques, animal husbandry, and seed production with hands-on experience working in the garden. GHI’s nutritionists will conduct nutritional assessments and provide education on proper diet and cooking skills.
In Africa’s most densely populated country, where 90% of the population is subsistence farmers, acquiring land is difficult for any community; but it is very rare for associations of PLWHA. GHI and the RRP+ have launched a land advocacy campaign to secure land for these associations, a process that includes negotiations with local governments and legal registration of the associations as agricultural cooperatives.
GHI and RRP+ are committed to implementing this program countrywide, expanding into each of Rwanda’s five provinces over the next three to five years.