Hunger Issues Tackled Through Kitchen-Gardens In Rural India

For decades, India has struggled with malnutrition with about 30% of the population with moderate to severe food insecurity. Goonj's work with the most vulnerable rural communities is impacting their hunger, most innovatively 'by' them leading with their own ground-up wisdom-led solutions.

Kitchen Garden In Schools: Goonj's School-To-School initiative (S2S) mobilizes and motivates school teachers, parents, and entire communities to actively participate in creating better schools and mid-day meals. They come together to create their own kitchen gardens to make the children's school mid-day meals more nutritious with more local vegetables included.

Kitchen Garden for women's well-being: In Goonj, Chuppi Todo Baithak's (Break the Silence Meetings), women get a platform to voice their menstrual challenges and come up with ideas for action. As women across rural India spoke about the connection between nutrition and menstrual health, our teams mobilized men and women from the community to create kitchen gardens as viable options for nutritious diets.

Kitchen Gardens

Covid and Kitchen Gardens: In the midst of lockdowns and loss of livelihood communities across India came to create and maintain kitchen gardens, as a source of sustenance. People got different local vegetables; they bartered their surplus produce locally, to generate income. Together with people, Goonj mobilized 5000+ kitchen gardens at this time.

Learnings for Hunger and Poverty Alleviation work: In the last decade, pan India Goonj mobilized for 6000+ kitchen gardens involving over 60,000 people. People learned to live more sustainably with self-sufficiency. These community-led, locally designed, customized, and maintained kitchen gardens were a success because 'when you make it you also maintain it.

Larger replication of the idea: Making community-led kitchen gardens is an integral part of Goonj's community-led rural development work. Making these gardens leads to a domino effect as neighboring villages get inspired and replicate them on their land.

Also Read: West Bengal: Women Revive Pond To Maintain Hygiene During Menstruation