With €1.5 million funding from the European Union (EU), Oxfam in Malawi in partnership with the Catholic Health Commission (CHC), is implementing a Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Project titled “Enhancing the capacity of CSOs, district level staff and communities in Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative in Malawi”. The goal of the project is to contribute towards the improved nutritional status of rural households in Malawi by strengthening the capacity of rural households and district level staff in addressing nutrition issues related to agriculture and SUN implementation.

The project’s overall objective is to contribute towards improved nutritional status of rural Households in Malawi, as part of which people are trained and promoted to have backyard gardens (Kitchen gardens), pit ratlines, kitchens, dish racks, Mponda Giya (toilet-hand washing facility), and a cloth line just to mention a few. Sagawa village has as much benefited from the project as all the households in the village have almost all the mentioned facilities. This has positively impacted the community as malnutrition cases have significantly dropped from 3% to 0%.

The project’s overall objective is to contribute towards improved nutritional status of rural Households in Malawi. Through the project,  people have been trained to establish backyard gardens (Kitchen gardens) and sanitation structures such as pit ratlines, kitchen, dish racks, hand washing facility (Mponda Giya) and a cloth line just to mention a few. Almost all the households in Sagawa village have translated the knowledge gained and have all the mentioned facilities in their household compounds. Backyard gardening is being promoted in the project as one of the many influential ways of promoting consumption of diversified diets.. In many cases when families had their produce upon harvest, the first thing that came to their mind was selling the produce with the aim of getting money and backyard gardens are being established for household’s personal nutrition benefit. Mrs Galagaza  one of the beneficiaries of the backyard gardening expresses the impact that the garden has brought in her life and that of her family “before backyard gardening my husband always pressurized us to sell our yearly produce from the farm and only benefit from the remains or damaged few which in many cases we had none. Indeed money was there but our health and that of my 4 year old was deteriorating.

The introduction of the gardens has created a whole new beginning in our lives we feed in all the 6 food groups year long without destroying our business at our main farm”. Not only has the village benefited from the project, but Traditional Authority Chitekwere as a community has also benefited from the care groups that have been established. Currently, T.A Chitekwere has 15 GVHs, 584 Clusters, 52 Care groups and 27 promoters as their community structures which are being empowered in Scaling Up Nutrition interventions. Presently, the area has 5655 households which have been already reached and benefited from the SUN project.

Figure 1: Nutrition status of under-five children in TA Chitekwere – Lilongwe