Mary used to constantly worry about providing enough food to feed her family. It was a daily struggle for her. And, in a country like Sierra Leone where four in every five rural households do not have enough to eat, it’s a struggle for many mothers.
But Mary’s life changed after she became involved in a food production scheme created by Christian Aid partner the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone.
She saw the scheme as an opportunity that would bring benefits not only for her and her family but for the community as a whole.
Working together
Before the scheme began, the people of Gbap used to farm individual plots and were unable to cultivate large areas and produce enough food for themselves and their families. People in the community would often go hungry and their children developed pot bellies.
The scheme changed this by bringing people together to cultivate the land as a collective and to share the benefits too. It also provided the tools they need to help plant and harvest their crops.
The result was improved harvest – previously people were only able to produce two or three bushels of rice but together they can produce more than a hundred. This leaves some farmers like Mary with enough to feed themselves and their families and some spare to sell at the market for a profit that they share.
It has also helped to bring the community closer together. They go out and work as a group and they share the problems they encounter and help resolve them too.
Mary is now the chair of the scheme in Gbap. She no longer needs to worry about how to feed her family; has money from the sale of her produce and says her children are healthy and concentrating better at school because they are now well fed.
But Mary’s not stopping there. More people from the community want to join the food production scheme and Mary would like to form more groups so that others can benefit from working together.
