Maintaining Healthy Habits in Community: Immaculee’s Story
Immaculée Ntabanganyimana is a small scale farmer, wife, mother of eight, and now, the proud owner of a beautiful home vegetable garden. From her garden, she not only feeds her family but also cultivates crops to sell at the local market.
72% of Rwandans grow food for a living, including Immaculée Ntabanganyimana: a small scale farmer, wife, mother of eight, and now, the proud owner of a beautiful home vegetable garden. From her garden, she not only feeds her family but also cultivates crops to sell at the local market.
“When I joined the GHI program in 2013, I learnt the value of growing vegetables. Since then, I have been cooking a balanced meal regularly, and my children now rarely fall sick. I also received two chickens from GHI, and I now have 18! My children and I can now enjoy eggs daily” - Immaculee says with a smile.
Immaculee, holding a carrot, her favorite vegetable
After she enrolled in GHI’s Child Nutrition Program, Immaculee started sharing vegetables and seedlings with her neighbors. She has been growing vegetables all year round using GHI’s climate-resilient, organic agriculture techniques like bed-building, compositing and creating her own pesticides.
Her vegetable garden now looks colorful with kale, nightshade, amaranth, spinach, and onions and her favorite, carrots. She is now able to provide veggies for her family’s daily consumption and create a source of income too.
In March 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Immaculee had the opportunity to join one of GHI’s graduate peer support groups. This was an opportunity to join a community of women supporting one another to maintain health habits and save for a brighter future.
“My main inspiration for joining the peer support group was to empower myself and my fellow members so that together, we could improve our families and our community. We have been saving money together and discussing ways of solving our community problem together.”
Members of this saving group make a small monthly contribution to the group’s saving fund. When they need to, they can also borrow from the fund, supporting one another in times of need.
One such time of need occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. When COVID-19 hit, Immaculee’s saving group was also affected. Many lost their jobs during the country-wide lockdown and most activities were at a standstill due the safety guidelines. As you may expect, their savings reduced too, and Immaculee was unable to meet her family’s immediate needs. Her family heavily relied on their home garden’s yield during this challenging time.
Despite these challenges, Immaculee continues to strive for her family’s health, and farming is a major part of this. She continues to use the agriculture and nutrition knowledge she learned from GHI to improve the life of her family and those around her.
Story by Gloria Busingye and photos by Godfrey Gatete