PROJECT #210
Project #210 | Clean Water & Community Gardens in Senegal
Our Partnership with CREATE!
The annual dry season in Senegal is long, so small-scale farmers have just 3 months to grow food when the rains come. Climate change has exacerbated this challenge, resulting in decreased rainfall, longer periods of drought, and desertification. With less time and land to grow food, many farmers focus on cultivating cash crops rather than nutritious foods to sustain their families. As a result, 17% of people in Senegal are food insecure, and 66% of children under age 5 are micronutrient deficient.
One Day’s Wages partnered with CREATE! to bring clean, abundant, and affordable water to rural communities in Senegal’s Fatick-Kaolack Region so that farmers can grow fresh vegetables all year long. Existing wells were rehabilitated and fitted with solar pumps and gravity-fed irrigation systems, and members of agricultural cooperatives in Ndiagne Kahone and Keur Ndiouga learned improved methods of organic vegetable cultivation. As a result, the farmers were able to begin producing up to 1,900 pounds of vegetables each month, and earn an average of $17 per month! Through our partnership, rural farmers with generations of agricultural knowledge gained new opportunities to grow enough nutritious foods for their families.
Our Collective Impact
Liters of Water Pumped Daily
Solar Pumps & Irrigation Systems Installed
People Trained in Vegetable Cultivation
Meet Lena
Lena is the President of the women’s group in Keur Ndiouga. Her community has both a borehole and a well but they only use the well water for domestic consumption, as it is too far from the garden to use for agriculture. Before the borehole, they had to pull out water manually, and many women had to leave the village to work in the town since practicing agriculture this way was too hard. Lena shared how access to water through the solar pumping system is easy and allows for the community to garden yearlong, producing a variety of vegetables.
Before partnering with CREATE!, Lena and her group were gardening, but they never had good production because they were working without any training or direction. She said, “Thanks to the technicians, we now understand many techniques and our production has increased.” Now, they are not only consuming fresh vegetables themselves, but people from surrounding villages are coming to buy from them because their organically grown vegetables do not spoil easily. As group president and a mother of six, Lena hopes for a successful future for her village and her children.
Thank you for making this possible!
Our movement is grassroots, to us that not only means the work on the ground is led by local leaders with the support of the community, but it also means that we raise the funds for our projects through everyday donors just like you. In addition to all the donors that gave $25, $100, or $250 and the campaigners that ran a race or donated their birthday to raise funds, we also want to thank our generous business, school, and faith sponsors who believed in our work and joined the movement.
If you want to support future projects like this you can make a donation to our clean water fund.
One Day's Wages is a grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty
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