Hunger-Undernutrition Blog

Hunger Struggle in Milwaukee

Guest Blog by Mary Ryan, with Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

As Organizer for Hunger Task Force, Milwaukee’s only free and local food bank and anti-hunger advocacy organization, I see people in Wisconsin struggle everyday to feed themselves or their families. Milwaukee is one of the poorest large cities in the country. Forty percent of Milwaukee children live in poverty. WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children as well as FoodShare, Wisconsin’s name for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are experiencing unprecedented caseloads. Hunger in Milwaukee, as in most places, has reached its highest level in recent years since the Great Depression.

Fortunately, there are over 165 community food drives happening right now with the common goal of raising food to donate to Hunger Task Force. Last year, we delivered over 9.5 million pounds of food free of charge to pantries, soup kitchens and meal programs in Milwaukee. Yet hunger remains a significant problem in our community and although charity is important in fighting hunger today, it alone is not enough to eliminate hunger tomorrow.

Government programs are an effective way to combat hunger and jumpstart the economy. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is the leading government nutrition program which functions as a safety net fighting hunger. In Wisconsin, more than 759,000 people participate in SNAP (called FoodShare in Wisconsin). For every FoodShare dollar spent locally, $1.79 is pumped back into the economy, creating an economic effect of more than $1.4 million. Hunger Task Force is also a strong advocate for the modernization of FoodShare in Wisconsin. We must do more to improve the efficiency and accessibility of FoodShare. Towards that end, we worked with the State to open its first self-service benefits center in Milwaukee. Hunger Task Force has added seven staff positions that work in two welfare buildings in Milwaukee to assist in the advancement of the self-service model.

Wisconsin utilizes an online application tool called ACCESS to identify and connect eligible populations to health, nutrition, and child care services. Hunger Task Force is happy to support this effective tool which allows people to do the following online: apply, check their case status, conduct their six-month review, and report case changes. We consider ACCESS to be the future of connecting people to government nutrition programs like SNAP/FoodShare, and we support Wisconsin’s efforts to strengthen self-service. Applicants utilize computers, scanners, and telephones to send information or conduct interviews with the State. Applicants and staff also complete a survey administered by Hunger Task Force to assess how well ACCESS is working and to identify any needed improvements or changes.

Hunger Task Force also advocates for Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization (CNR) in the lame duck session of Congress this year. CNR regulates programs feeding millions of children through school breakfast and lunch, summer meals, WIC, and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Access to healthy meals is vital for a child’s growth; hungry children don’t learn. We are urging people to tell Congress to pass a strong CNR bill without cutting SNAP by December 3, 2010. People can take action at www.hungertaskforce.org/take-action/contact-your-elected-officials/.

Mary Ryan

Organizer

Hunger Task Force

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

www.hungertaskforce.org

Gathering the Food at our Feet

After many years of studying invasive plant species in Patagonia, Argentina, Dr. Eduardo Rapoport, Professor at the Universidad Nacional Del Camohue, realized that many of the “pests” he was caataloging were edible. “I found that, especially in areas disturbed by man, such as roads, back lots, and gardens, there are a great deal of unintentional food sources.” As a result, Dr. Rapoport found himself looking at these “pests, invaders, and weeds,” in a very different light.

“I gathered together a group of students and we set out to assess how many kilograms of wild-growing edible food could be found in a hectare of urban space,” said Dr. Rapoport. Starting with the airport and working through different parts of the city, Dr. Rapoport and his students found that the average amount of food per hectare was 1,300 kilograms—or about 3,400 pounds of food per acre.

Dr. Rapoport repeated the same study in Mexico in order to compare the results in temperate Patagonia with a tropical environment. He and his students found that there was an even greater wealth of food in that area—about 2,100 kilograms per hectare. “It was surprising,” said Dr. Rapoport, “and it was incredibly valuable. There are people who are going hungry and they are surrounded by plenty of food. They just don’t know it.”

Not only are there a wide variety of wild edible plants growing near city streets, at schools, and in the public areas throughout South America, explains Dr. Rapoport, but many of them are also incredibly productive. “These are weeds,” says Dr. Rapoport, “they multiply and grow quickly. We found that many of them could be harvested multiple times per season, meaning that a gatherer could get more than one meal from one plant over the course of a very short period of time.”

Dr. Rapoport and his wife, Dr. Barbara Drausal, with the help of the University, have published a book, Malezas Comestibles del Cono Sur or Edible Weeds of the Southern Continent, a guidebook of sorts that identifies and describes 240 edible weeds growing throughout South America. The book includes illustrations and recipes, directing the reader to the parts of each plant that are edible and providing detailed instructions for how to best prepare them.

Although, Dr. Rapoport does not encourage people to plant these species—they are invasive after all—he says that they can be an important source of inexpensive food. “This is not a solution to world hunger,” says Dr. Rapoport, “but it is valuable knowledge that has been lost over the years. There is food all around us but most people just don’t notice it. Or they destroy it because they mistake it for useless pests.”

In addition to his book, Dr. Rapoport visits primary school classrooms to help educate the next generation of Argentina’s food gatherers. And he has reached out to the Ministry of Education in the hopes that his research might become a part of standardized curriculum. “Often I take students outside to their school yard,” he says, “and they are amazed by how many edible plants are growing right there.”

With edible plants throughout South America originating from North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, Dr. Rapoport also hope to have his book translated into English and other languages. The more people he can share this information with the better. “It’s about getting this valuable information to the people who need it most,” he says, “the hungry people who are surrounded by food.”

To read more about looking to “weeds” and indigenous vegetables as a source of food, see: Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, Homegrown Solutions to Hunger and Poverty, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, and Malawi’s Real Miracle.

Bread for the World Institute's 2011 Hunger Report

Guest blog by Todd Post, with the Bread for the World Institute

Bread for the World Institute has just released its 2011 Hunger Report, Our Common Interest: Ending Hunger and Malnutrition. The report is available in print and online for free at www.hungerreport.org. This is the 21st edition of the Institute’s annual Hunger Report and its release could not be timelier.

The 2011 report starts with the spike in food prices in 2007-08 that pushed the number of people who suffer from hunger to more than a billion for the first time in history.  Prices have fallen since then and so has the number of undernourished people, but as we are seeing in 2010, grain markets are still quite volatile, and so food prices remain a great concern.

For children born in the poorest parts of the world during the 2007-2008 crisis, higher food prices meant that their families could not afford staple foods let alone the more nutritious foods. A series of articles in the British medical journal, the Lancet, published in early 2008 had immediate relevance, as it pointed out that malnutrition during the window of opportunity during pregnancy and in the first two years of life has irreversible consequences for a child. For children who survive early childhood malnutrition, the physical and cognitive setbacks are lifelong, leaving children more prone to illness throughout their lives and reducing earning potential. 

At the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, U.S. leadership was instrumental in gaining the commitment of member nations to $22 billion to improve global food and nutrition security. For its part, the Obama administration developed its own initiative, Feed the Future. Bread for the World, along with several U.S. civil society groups, provided input into the design of the program.

The 2011 Hunger Report argues that Feed the Future is a bold step forward in U.S. foreign assistance, possibly the best opportunity to come along in decades for the United States to contribute to lasting progress against global hunger and malnutrition.  Feed the Future stands out with its dual focus on boosting incomes of smallholder farmers and improving the nutritional status of mothers and children, the groups most at risk of hunger and malnutrition; and it takes a comprehensive approach, which the report argues should have the following elements: increase the productivity of smallholder farmers, help them reach markets, take advantage of the links between agriculture and nutrition and to scale up evidence-based nutrition interventions (especially for pregnant women and young children), empower women, strengthen safety nets, and respond quickly to hunger emergencies.

After decades of underinvestment in agriculture, Feed the Future is a refreshing throwback to when agriculture held a much more prominent place in U.S. development assistance. But Feed the Future has the potential to be much stronger than earlier U.S. programs. Its focus on country-led development is encouraging, but this must include building capacity of national governments to sustain the progress begun with development assistance, and should also include building capacity of civil society to hold national governments accountable for development outcomes.

The 2011 Hunger Report includes several other recommendations to strengthen Feed the Future and U.S. foreign assistance more broadly. Among them, Congress should rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to make clear that poverty reduction and development are key elements of U.S. foreign policy and reduce earmarks to ensure that U.S. development assistance has the flexibility to respond to realities on the ground. U.S. food aid should be improved to allow for a greater focus on nutritional quality, especially to reach infants and young children. In addition, the United States should take the lead in strengthening international institutions that are complementary to U.S. bilateral assistance in fighting hunger and malnutrition.

 

Putting Classroom Theory into Practice

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

“The idea was to bring a lot of expertise from the corporate world to help young social start ups,” says Fred Rose when asked about his motivation for founding the Acara Institute two years ago. As part of the Minnesota University’s Institute on the Environment, Acara has developed a classroom curriculum for universities in the U.S. and in India that challenges students to think creatively about how to use private businesses to solve pressing global issues such as hunger and poverty. But instead of the semester culminating in an exam or a paper, Acara provides students the necessary tools to turn their best class work into reality.

“There is a lot of energy in the business world and in young people,” says Fred, “that is being directed towards providing services or materials that help to make the world a better place. I wanted to help provide young business students with better tools to help them make a profit through solving some of these global challenges we face today.”

As part of their studies, students enrolled in Acara’s program compete in the Acara Challenge. Participating universities in the U.S. are partnered with universities in India, creating teams of 15 students who will work together to come up with a business plan to address a specific problem chosen by Acara. “Last year’s competition theme was clean water for cooking and this year is on food and water security,” explained Fred. “This year, basically, we are asking the question,’ how are we going to feed 9 billion people without destroying everything?’”

Winning teams are given the opportunity to attend the Acara Summer Institute and to see if their model can become reality. Working with experts in the field and on the ground, students can refine their business plan and prepare for an actual launch. “There are always assumptions about what will or won’t work,” says Fred. “Even the best models may be based on incorrect assumptions and it’s incredibly valuable for students to view that first hand. They also get to meet their international teammates in person and discuss their project’s future potential.”

A number of projects from past years have even moved beyond that final assessment stage, earning attention from funders. “We have some prototype businesses that have gotten started and received some funding,” says Fred. “Currently there is a program on the ground that is developing drip irrigation systems to sell and improve farm water management, and a program that is using bio digesters to create fuel from dairy cow waste.”

But the success of these projects would not be possible, says Fred, without the partnerships between the students in the U.S. and in India. “The idea is that the students in India have to do the field work because they are already on the ground. They go out and conduct interviews and observe so that they can create a business model with the people in the U.S. that will actually work on the ground.”

The partnership also helps to ensure that the business models are sustainable. “The long term sustainability of any of these projects has to be with the students in India,” says Fred. “It’s pretty arrogant to think you can sit here in a classroom in Minneapolis and fix these hugely complicated problems half way around the world.”

To read more about how innovations in the classroom are helping to improve livelihoods and alleviate hunger and poverty, see: Using Digital Technology to Empower and Connect Young Farmers, How to Keep Kids Down on the Farm, Listening to Farmers, Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, Cultivating a Passion for Agriculture, and Taking the Classroom to the Field.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Nigeria this week, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels. If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates. Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

It's Good for you, so why Don't you Want it? - Disruptive Assumptions in the Fight Against Malnutrition

In hunger and malnutrition alleviation, we've tended to make assumptions that can sometimes impede the progress of initiatives.  A few of the more dominant ones that I've observed include:

1.  If it's good and can solve a hunger and malnutrition problem, beneficiaries will easily adopt it.

2. If you have evidence and data that show positive results, leaders will apply the data and evidence into field work.

3. If we have funding to design and understand the right interventions, scale up of these interventions will be achieved.

4. If decision makers are informed and brought into the process, they will see the light and do right by their people.

The reality is that sometimes these assumptions have been barriers - not only in the widespread application of effective malnutrition interventions, but also across development as a whole. And, they are assumptions that we must avoid for future implementation and scale of innovative interventions. This was top of mind for me as I listened to distinguished speakers take the stage at the Global Biofortification Conference. 

The greatest challenges to the successful introduction and scaling of biofortified crops and other nutrition interventions are the very people these interventions are meant to help.  Shame on us if we try to take innovative and safe approaches to hunger and malnutrition alleviation to the masses, and they are rejected because we didn't simultaneously cultivate a culture of understanding and acceptance while the "lab work" was being done. 

Today, Keith West from Johns Hopkins University, gave a compelling speech about the importance of evidence and leveraging that evidence into application.  He said that we need to bring people up the "readiness ladder" as we look for the adoption of biofortified crops. 

I was inspired by human rights and nutrition security advocate, Ruth Khasaya Oniang'o who said that the "more we know, the less we do." She said we assume that if we come up with the right interventions and put research and discoveries out there, people will do something with them. But that is a very wrong assumption to make.

Lawrence Haddad, Director of the Institute of Development Studies based in the UK, who spoke yesterday at the Conference, reinforced the need to remember that performance of work must be evaluated from a people-centric perspective.  The take-away from my visit with Lawrence, which was an invigorating meeting of the minds, was that great products and great interventions only get us so far - it's the people who will adopt such innovations that get us the rest of the way.

While I don't want to make all of this sound grim, because there is tremendous progress and promise to help eradicate hunger, there are a few important steps the biofortification world can take and apply as it rolls out crop varieties that are nutritional powerhouses.

1. Communicate the market and commercial value and benefits of new varieties to seed producers and farmers.

2. Understand what habits are in the household and get communities to understand, within the context of their own practices and beliefs, the benefits of an orange-fleshed sweet potato or an iron-fortified rice, for example.

3. Figure out what will matter to policymakers, funders and other in-country decision makers, and reverse engineer your advocacy and awareness building strategy around biofortified crop adoption.

4. Stop looking at beneficiaries as just beneficiaries.  Convert "beneficiaries" - especially mothers, grandmothers and mother-in-laws - into powerful advocates and agents for change. 

5. Understand the landscape before you introduce an intervention.  Are there competing initiatives?  Are there policy challenges that will affect the introduction of biofortified crops?  What is on the agenda of consumer watch-dog groups and other activists?  What parallel sector leaders and influencers are trusted by the public, where do they stand on biofortification and how can we bring them into the fold?

6. Have a contingency plan.  You can't anticipate every scenario, but have a plan of action in place to anticipate problems and tackle them proactively if possible.

I'm sure I've missed a few and would love to hear your thoughts or adjustments on this.  There have been millions of dollars poured into finding effective interventions, and very talented brain power focused on bringing innovations to the table.  We can't afford these innovations to lay dormant simply because we didn't bring the communities that matter up that readiness ladder.

 

Delivering Better Nutrition Through Better Crops

 

I have just returned from three weeks of in-field assessments in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador where, together with a US-based non-profit, we were looking at effective nutrition interventions that meet the needs of vulnerable communities.

I was reminded once again, that introducing fortified food products or supplements is complex. The sustainability of fortified products can be a challenge as it depends on a whole host of factors - including quality control, physical product delivery systems and consumer behaviour change. 

The discussion with Central American nutrition and health leaders consistently steered toward taking advantage of local staple foods and understanding local dietary habits.  Leaders reinforced that we first need to start with foods that are readily available and already being prepared at home, and improve their nutritional profile.  Then we must fill nutrition gaps through innovative supplementation approaches that are palateable to communities in need.

It sounds great, but it is easier said than done? Perhaps not.

At this week's Global Biofortification Conference, hosted by HarvestPlus in Washington, DC, leaders across sectors came together to understand how we can bridge agriculture and food production with the world's nutrition needs more effectively.  

Biofortification is a novel approach involving breeding higher levels of essential vitamins and minerals directly into the staple food crops that the poor already eat - such as sweet potato, rice, cassava, corn, wheat and beans. While biofortification does not promise to fill all the micronutrient needs of undernourished communities, it does create an interesting delivery vehicle for key nutrients that are most deficient from diets of the poor, such as iron, Vitamin A, and zinc.

This morning, Howarth Bouis, Director of HarvestPlus said that "if our food systems do not supply essential minerals and vitamins, then agriculture is an important way to fix the problem."  He also said that we have to incorporate agriculture as we develop effective health strategies and biofortification creates that link between food production and improved health.

Some skeptics of biofortification and critics say that the time required to breed and reap the fruits of biofortification is a decades-long process.  Activists in the environmental protection realm claim that anything involving the manipulation of genes could have unknown consequences on indigenous crops and even the health of the very people these crops are intended to help. And then there are others who feel that biofortification requires a significant investment in research and farming techniques, and claim that there may be more cost effective ways to improve nutrition quickly. 

There may be additional criticisms and challenges as biofortified crops are unveiled in the coming years. What we do know is that these crops have tremendous promise, and education and awareness building around their introduction will be key.

It seems to me that the conference's approach is precisely what we need when introducing any effort aimed to help the poor.  We must bring together leaders from across sectors, arm them with the right information and evidence so they can go back and be advocates for novel techniques to fight hunger and malnutrition.  It also will be important that funders invest in measuring impact, educating beneficiary communities and bringing in-country stakeholders to the table so they are converted into advocates, and can troubleshoot as appropriate as biofortified seeds become available.

Great science should not end at bringing innovation to market.  Great science only stands the test of time if we focus just as much on the real-world application of scientific outputs as we have on the work in laboratories and research stations.  Delivering better nutrition through better crops is a long time coming, and we are on the cusp of making these fortified crops available to the masses.  Let's make sure that we account for human error, human interests and human habits as part of the biofortification roll-out plan. 

Check out the following video highlighting the challenges of malnutrition and how biofortification can help.

Hope for a Healthier harvest from Yassir Islam on Vimeo.

 

Global Conference on Biofortification Kicks Off Today

 

The first Global Conference on Biofortification kicks off today in Washington, DC.  Leaders across sectors ranging from science, research and academic institutions to public health, nutrition, corporations and social sciences have come together to discuss the promise of staple crops fortified with vitamins and minerals and the best way to apply these innovations in the field.

Stay tuned for additional posts about the conference.  For more information, click on the link below.

http://www.harvestplus.org/content/first-global-conference-biofortification

Harvesting Water & The Search For A Toilet in India

Guest blog by Andy Stoll, Social Entreprener, Media Producer and Around-The-World Traveler at NoBoundaries.org.

It was a dusty day in the early fall on a snarled, corrugated, dirt road. I was hanging onto the back of a rusty, 20-year old Honda motorcycle, as traffic whisked by on both sides, looking out either way across barren cracked flatlands, sparsely peppered by withering crops.  I was about 5-hours southeast of Mumbai, India.  The reason I was there: I was looking for a toilet.

The village I was about to visit faced catastrophic water shortages for 5-months each year.  In this dry season, the villagers relied on small muddy streams, puddles and run off, as their only source for water (no municipal pipes anywhere to be found).  One villager told me that during the dry season water became such a valued commodity, there were often cases of 'water theft.'

Over the past two years, with the help of Rotary Clubs from Mumbai and the US, the village built numerous concrete ponds and tanks to "harvest water."  These troughs used a series of gutters, pipes and catchment devices to collect rain water during the monsoon season, which was then stored for use during the 6-month dry season (during which clean water was once totally unavailable).

Anyway, back to the toilets... 

I was going to check out an innovative program that was helping villagers build family-owned toilets by providing 50% of the materials & cost and 50% of the labor, as long as the family provided the other 50% of the material & cost, 50% of the labor and 50% of the labor towards another family's toilet.  This pay-it-forward mentality not only built toilets, it built a shared sense of ownership in each other's property and a built a stronger sense of community and shared destiny. 

The project's organizers also found that this private ownership model had profound impacts on the village's sanitation and health for two reasons:

1. Without toilets, villagers simply used the bushes and latrine-like-holes, often further contaminating the already-scarce water sources.
2. The family-based ownership of each toilet, rather than a communally-owned village toilet, led to cleaner toilets that people were more willing to use---just as the toilet in your home is likely much cleaner and much more user-friendly than communal toilets at the public park.

The motorcycle came to a screeching halt in the village square as I dismounted with my camera in hand.  I spent the next few hours visiting with villagers, snapping photos and learning the politics of water scarcity.  Quite proud of their newly abundant clean water, the villagers, particularly the kids, were more than willing to pose in photos with water faucets and catchment devices.

As is customary in so many poor villages of the world, I was quickly invited into home after home for tea and warm hospitality. 

In one particular home, I felt comfortable enough to ask about the 'toilet program.'

"YES, we have a toilet," the mother beamed.

"May I take a photo of it?" I asked tentatively, after a short pause (imagine for just a second, what it would be like if a foreigner who didn't speak your language, dropped by your home unannounced and then asked to see your bathroom).

"Of course," she said, and led me out behind the house to a concrete latrine-looking building. 

"Wait, wait' she said, " as I pulled out my camera.

My hope was to take a few photos of the toilets to compare the design to other toilet projects I'd visited elsewhere.

This is where things took a surprising twist.

She quickly hustled back into the house with her children in tow.  After about 5-minutes of rustling from inside the hut, she emerged dressed in clean clothes and jewelry on.

I smiled back. 

She then shuffled in front of the outhouse and motioned for me to take the photo.

I had not asked the family to be in the photo, nor even implied it.  But what I understood at that moment was that she was proud of her toilet. I think it was pride built from the family's contribution, pride build from helping her neighbor build another toilet, pride that seemed to be passed from household to household.

After I took a few more photos, we stood next to the toilet chatting, her granddaughter in her arms.  She told me about the building process and the effects of the toilets on families (the other villagers looked upon them with higher regard, the children got sick less and went to school more).  Pleased with my excitement for the toilet, she then led me out the door and over to a neighbor's house (with a toilet I later learned she helped build).  As we walked into the hut, she exclaimed with a little giggle of glee, "There's a foreigner here...He wants to see your toilet!" 

I spent the afternoon photographing toilets and one family after another, without being asked, stood proudly in front of their toilets for the photos.  Each photo reminded me of a picture I have of my younger brother in high school standing in front of his first car.

I left that village the following day with two new ways to see the world:

1. The importance of pride and ownership in development solutions.  Even the poorest people have just as much pride as you and I do.  Most would prefer to earn what they get rather than just take a no-strings attached handout.  Any solution that forgets this principal will likely fail, as pride and ownership in the 'free thing' wanes.  So much of the worst damaged caused by so called 'development projects' are caused with the best of intentions.
2. Everything begins with water. This particular village's first step was building (with the help of a partner in Rotary) a 'water harvesting' system to solve their water shortage problems.   The water tanks led to improvements in sanitation and food growing.  These improvements in sanitation and food allowed kids to have better health.  Better health led them to more school.  And I'd assume, in a simplified sense, going to school leads to more businesses and jobs, which leads to economic development, which leads to money, which leads to more water tanks, which leads to more toilets and so on. Health, hunger, poverty, education, economic development and community all begin with access to clean, healthy drinking water. 

All photos provided courtesy of Andy Stoll. Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Andy Stoll is an American-based media producer and social entrepreneur. 

From a young age, Andy wanted to 'change the world, but realized he better first get a sense of how it  actually works.  So, in 2006, with only a virgin passport, a backpack and a one-way ticket to China, Andy set out on what would become a 4-year trip around-the-world. The purpose was simple: see how people live in the world.   Through experiences working, studying, teaching and volunteering in 40 countries, Andy set out to experience the world first-hand.  Among other things, he lived the life of a maize farmer in a mud hut village in Zambia, worked in a dress factory in Bangkok for 60 US cents an hour, lived in a Buddhist Temple in Korea, explored the slums of India in search of street magicians and helped perform cataract surgeries for villagers on the remote islands of Fiji.  You can read more stories from his travels at www.noboundaries.org, or find him on Twitter at @andystoll.

Turning an Invasive Species into a Livelihood

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In Kenya, for the over 5,000 people living in rural communities on or near its shore, Lake Victoria—the largest body of freshwater in Africa—is a life line. It is the main source of water for bathing, drinking, and cooking in the area and its fish populations provide both protein and income to families. “But the shores of Lake Victoria are choking,” says Shana Greene, founder and director of Village Volunteers, a Seattle-based organization that partners with rural communities around the world to create environmentally sustainable solutions for hunger and poverty.

“The shores of Lake Victoria are solid with water hyacinths,” continues Shana, and the invasive plant is having a disastrous effect on the wildlife and people who depend on it for survival. The water hyacinth originated in the Amazon and has rapidly spread through various tropical and sub-tropical regions throughout South America, Africa, and Asia, pushing out indigenous plant and fish. The hyacinth form lush green carpets that warm the water’s temperature while simultaneously reducing sunlight, depleting oxygen levels and blocking access to the shallows, tangling fishing nets and trapping boats. The plants also make an ideal hiding ground for disease carrying snails and poisonous snakes. “Fish are an important source of protein for local communities,” says Shana, “and the warmer water harbors all sorts of diseases, making it less safe for drinking.”

As a result, Village Volunteers is helping local communities to fight back and turn a potentially devastating situation into a financial boon.

“Water hyacinth is actually a really great raw material for so many things,” says Shana. “We are helping communities in Kenya harvest it and use it to create tools to use in the home and to sell. We are using it to make fuel briquettes for cook fires and turning it into a very effective fertilizer.” Village Volunteers is also helping local entrepreneurs produce chairs, baskets, and other pieces of furniture that can be made by weaving together the tough stems and leaves of the hyacinths, as well as biodegradable sanitary napkins.

“The hyacinth invasion is an overwhelming problem,” says Shana, “but it is becoming a business. And by using only locally available materials and labor—oxen help to harvest the hyacinth, for example—the end result is largely self-sustaining.” And while the villages on the shore of the lake can’t eliminate the hyacinth all together, they are clearing it away from the immediate shores, helping to improve the quality of their immediate water supply, as well as habitats for the fish populations they depend on.

“We are helping farmers to not only improve their incomes and livelihoods, but also to make, at least a small difference on their local surroundings. They are turning a devastating situation into a life improving situation.”

To read more about innovations that improve water quality and livelihoods, see: Water Out of Thin Air, Getting Water to Crops, Access to Water Improves Life for Women and Children, Reducing Wastewater Contamination Starts with a Question, ECHOing a Need for Innovations and Using Dirt to Make Water Clean.

Thank you for reading! As you may already know, Danielle Nierenberg is traveling across sub-Saharan Africa visiting organizations and projects that provide environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty. She has already traveled to over 19 countries and visited 130 projects highlighting stories of hope and success in the region. She will be in Nigeria next, so stay tuned for more writing, photos and video from her travels.

If you enjoy reading this diary, we blog daily on Nourishing the Planet, where you can also sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly blog and travel updates. Please don’t hesitate to comment on our posts, we check them daily and look forward to an ongoing discussion with you. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.