Food Security Achieved through DRM Trainings

Save the Children through the Resilience Economic Development (RED) Project has proved rewarding in helping communities harvest more produce as they are trained disaster risk management.

Sambani Chairperson for Village Civil Protection Committee (VCPC) in T/A Mdeza is one of the beneficiaries of the Project and has also witnessed people from her community benefit from it.

She said, “The project encourages us to engage in the planting of trees, and they have taught us Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) and imparted different expertise on us farmers and other people in the community.”

Sambani said that as a result of the expertise gained, their crops in the recent years have performed well as compared to the time before the project was implemented. This has contributed to food security in the community.

“Personally, the project has had a lot of impact on my harvest. I am able to harvest at least 30 bags of maize now, compared to previously when I could only harvest 10 – 15 bags of maize,” she acclaimed.

The project also trained the community on how to deal with heavy winds which has proved to be useful during the rainy season as Sambani’s house was blown away by the same, and her mother who was inside got injured. With the expertise she gathered from the project, she has managed to shelter her house from these winds.

Sambani says she has been working hand in hand with the VCPC’s secretary to ensure that everyone in the community engages in the practices brought about by the project. Additionally, the youth have been trained in several handy things that they may be engaged in.

The RED project is funded by Save the Children, Italy and it, among other focal areas, aims to equip communities with the necessary knowledge as regards strategies to prevent disaster risk as well as managing residual risk.