One Home One Garden

• 

  One Home One Garden

The attainment of food production and self reliance by growing their own veggies using minimal money, space and water. This awareness and idea will help the successful food gardens for the households and boosted nutrition in the area. The idea will start by collecting data through secondary school based project which will lead into the homes of youth to identify the nutrition and environmental issue that the households and communities are facing.

The produce from the household’s gardens will increase nutritional well-being of the beneficiaries for consumption of fresh veggies. Establishment and maintaining the household food gardens will help to improving household food security. Increase awareness of how proper food and nutrition which can reduce vulnerability to HIV infection and increase resilience to AIDS.

The one home one garden aims establish a model for environmental action within the households and communities, include consulting with the community to identify a local environmental issue that needs to be addressed through environmental knowledge and practical action. In addition, they will have the hands-on experience of what it takes for the households and communities to deal with a local environmental condition themselves to sustain their nutrition and food security.

Maize, wheat, soy, sugar remain some of the biggest crops harvested worldwide however these harvests go directly into a refined food market, and well, let’s face it, refined foods have very nutritional value at all. The human body can be sustained for a period of time but sooner or later the effects of a nutritionally deficient diet do take their toll. Our immune systems are often the first compromised leaving people far more vulnerable to infections etc. I always use the analogy of the mighty cow, a big strong beast to say the least, a cow eats grass, grass is green, people generally don’t have any green food sources on their plates – its all brown and white right (meat, potatoes, pap)… So with that said it would be really important for the powers at be to start finding ways to locally grow a more diverse harvest of fresh produce.

The production of vegetables using their own seeds and traditional methods will help in saving the environment while ensuring the government's course of improving the livelihoods for the households and communities at large. Through this idea, the community will be trained on importance of saving the natural resources, such as water, soil and the production resources such as seed.

The digital world opens up so many different avenues and there is a burst of health apps available on the market. I do believe we need to embrace the fact that in Africa alone there are more mobile phones than people, this means the digital kingdom is at our fingertips. Applications allowing the user to interface their daily food intake could be developed to show them their nutritional intake and calculate their deficiencies. I would love to wake up in the morning and have my app show me that just one carrot, one apple and one olive would give me all the amino acids required for the very building blocks for my body to synthesize this into protein. Remembering that all proteins derived from amino acids are commonly called the building blocks of life.

Eating has become a spoil and something we as a human nation seem to do for fun. When last did we eat for life, for the well being of our metabolic processes? Perhaps eating is more about science and the magic of combining the right foods in the right quantities to ensure the human organism can function at optimum.