Agricultural Development Projects

Overview

Energy for human rights ONLUS has been promoting the creation of community gardens for some years, guaranteeing the right to food and sustainable development. The project stems from the need to provide adequate nutrition to the children of the schools built by Energia in the villages of Senegal and Gambia.

In addition to the centers set up or built in large urban centers, since 2001 we have concentrated our energies in the poorest rural communities and over the years we have built multifunctional humanist centers; these serve as a nursery school in the morning and a school recovery center in the afternoon, as well as being the seat of microcredit activities and village committee meetings. Nursery schools are attended by a large number of children for 3 years and the problem of their nutrition is very acute. Without a minimum of nutrition children have attention problems and the effort they make to get to school and back home (in some cases 2-3 km on foot in the sun) takes away their enthusiasm and promotes school dropout. So the possibility of having one meal a day for the children would also increase parents’ motivation to send their children to school.

In addition to the creation of the vegetable gardens, if necessary, the construction of wells and adequate irrigation systems are supported, which allow the land to be cultivated all year round despite the sandy soil, the limited amount of rainfall and their distribution in the sunny summer months. The agricultural development project started at the end of 2015 and currently involves the villages of Ballanghar (Gambia) and Sossop (Senegal), the latter being experimentation. The construction of a chicken coop has also begun this year in Ballanghar, in order to develop an economic activity that is a support to those who carry it and a source of food for school children.

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