Africa: GROW BIOINTENSIVE^® Programs Spread Food Security

Manor House Agricultural Centre
and Common Ground Garden Project in Kenya

In the early 1970s, Polly Noyce became acquainted with Ecology Action and its Director, John Jeavons. In 1983 Noyce, on a trip to Kenya, purchased a former boys’ school four hours north of Nairobi and offered it to Ecology Action as a site for a Biointensive training project. Ecology Action’s Board approved the idea, and the Manor House Agricultural Centre was started in 1984, with a two-year program for training high school graduates in Biointensive Agriculture (BIA) and other alternative technology methods. In the early 1990s the Centre started giving one-week workshops in which self-help groups from different communities—mainly women farmers—came to learn BIA. Three-month and six-week workshops are also given on request from staff of other organizations.

In 1994 Emmanuel Omondi from Kenya was a six-month intern at Ecology Action’s Mini-Farm in Willits, California. In 1996, Omondi became Director of Manor House and under his leadership the Centre’s infrastructure, staff team building, programs, outreach and connection with other development organizations have been added or greatly improved. The many successful grants he has written have resulted in needed structural improvements to the old buildings and other physical setup of the school. Other grants have funded an extremely effective outreach program that trains communities to become mini-training centers (MTC). As of 2005, there are 25 MTC, each reaching out to other communities in its area. Omondi has also contacted other NGOs and governmental development organizations that are bringing services to rural people in the same area, in order to help coordinate their programs, work together and avoid duplication of efforts.

Manor House was the first organization in Kenya to teach BIA and as a result over 100,000 people have been trained since 1984 and 100 plus organizations in Kenya are teaching BIA.

COMMON GROUND PROJECT

Joshua Machinga, from Kenya, was a six-month intern at Ecology Action’s Mini-Farm in 1995 after graduating from the Manor House Agricultural Centre’s two-year Biointensive Agriculture certificate program. After spending some years as an extension officer for Manor House, Joshua branched out on his own and started the Common Ground Project (formerly called the Pilot Follow-Up Project). The project started by initiating compost utilization trials with two farmers, and also by training two other farmers to grow 40-bed units for diet, compost and income. Throughout the years, Joshua and his colleagues have taught farmers’groups (a good percentage of them women) the basics of GROW BIOINTENSIVE, not only in western Kenya, but also in Uganda. In recent years he received a grant to start an affiliated project in Teso, an arid area of western Kenya near Uganda.

Joshua and his wife Zipporah have also started a school for pre-school and primary-age children. One of its missions is to re-connect children with the Earth and to help them understand the importance of growing food with Biointensive. This is because in Kenya farming is looked down on and digging is regarded as a punishment. The school received a grant in 2004 for fifth-grade students to teach Biointensive to a women’s group composed mainly of widows and also to help start gardens for families impacted by AIDS.

* Manor House Centre, the Common Ground Project, G-BIACK and the Kilili Self-Help Project are Ecology Action's African partner organizations. Ecology Action’s financial and educational assistance make success stories like this possible.

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For more information about these projects, go to the
Manor House Agricultural Centre Website or the Common Ground Project Website.

The Kilili Self-Help Project

The Kilili Self Help Project is one of Ecology Action's partner organizations supporting the work of trained and certified Kenyan community workers who teach farmers the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method of organic farming and soil fertility management.

Kilili Self Help Project supports graduates of Manor House Agricultural Centre in western Kenya in their work with farmers.

Sandra Mardigian, director of Kilili Self Help Project, had lived in Kenya in the mid-80s and had many friends around the country. Back in the US in 1989, she raised money to send a group of primary school teachers from Kilili Village in Machakos, Kenya, to Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) for a week-long training workshop in practical Biointensive methods. Returning to Kenya the following year, Sandra found that the teachers and their students had beautiful, prospering Biointensive gardens at the schools, the families were involved, and the project was a huge success.

Based on these results, Kilili Self Help Project began to raise funds to sponsor other Kenyans to take the same program at MHAC. For several years, core groups of farmers from one location traveled to MHAC for a week of training and returned home to practice the Biointensive method and train other farmers in their area.

Meanwhile, the number of highly qualified graduates of MHAC’s two-year program was increasing each year. Since there are very few paying opportunities for these young professionals, Kilili Self Help Project began supporting their work with farmers. Eventually, grants became almost entirely dedicated to helping MHAC graduates with expenses for programs they initiate themselves, and this has become the primary mission of Kilili Self Help Project. The organization also provides financial-hardship scholarships for recommended students enrolled in MHAC’s two-year program each year.

In 2005, with support from Kilili Self-Help Project, MHAC graduates trained more than 10,000 farmers in six-day workshops. The cost: less than $6 per farmer!

Currently, through the generosity of Kilili donors, more than 116,000 families are using simple, ecological methods to achieve food security and economic self-reliance. Highly productive GROW BIOINTENSIVE gardens provide extra crops to sell. Family health improves. Soil is enriched. Children can go to school, often for the first time. The average cost of training for each farmer is US $3.50

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Manor House Centre, the Common Ground Project, G-BIACK and the Kilili Self-Help Project are Ecology Action's African partner organizations. Ecology Action’s financial and educational assistance make success stories like this possible.

Please Donate Now and
Help Support These Active, Productive Programs!

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More Content:

For more information about these projects, go to the
Kilili Self-Help Project Website.