Stories From The Field - Page 11 of 12

“12 Hours in the Day”

February 27, 2012

It’s exciting to usher in another year with Development in Gardening and have so much to look forward to! We have come a long way since our meager beginning 6 years ago, and I’m proud that we have not lost our grassroots focus or sacrificed our core values in order to survive. With a strong Board of Directors and an inspiring staff, DIG is poised for significant growth in 2012. Our project in Lwala has been particularly meaningful for me

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Rona, a Positive Example from Kafue

February 24, 2012

Rona first joined Railway clinic in Kafue, Zambia with a Mothers to Mothers (M2M) program. Railway’s M2M program helps educate new mothers living with HIV how to prevent mother to child transmission. Rona is a mother of six. Her youngest child Kiki continues to fall short of the developmental norms of children her age. Rona became interested in the DIG program at Railway Clinic so that she might learn about nutrition and how to produce her own food in order

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Meet Faith Owuor

November 21, 2011

Faith received her bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture at Egerton University in Kenya. She has experience in organic farming, community organizing, rural development and project management. She has worked for several different non-profits, including UNICEF and is dedicated to making each organization better than when she found it. Before joining DIG, Faith worked in Sudan with Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) leading community mobilization, farmer training, agroforestry and livestock production. Faith is from the same region where our new

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Volunteering in Kafue

November 18, 2011

By: Damian, a DIG volunteer who has been in Kafue for the last 6 months with his wife, Ali. Kafue’s DIG project has been hard work with great rewards. We have met (and hopefully empowered) wonderful people who genuinely seem to enjoy the work and camaraderie. Four main gardens have been established at the local medical clinics with satellite home gardens spreading from each of these. I believe that a solid core group of women have really mastered the gardening

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Zikomo Zambia

August 11, 2011

Every summer I make a pilgimage to a select handful of DIG’s garden in Africa. By the time the trip comes around I am usually more than a touch exhausted as it’s always trailing an inspiring yet emotionally draining series of fundraisers and a hectic spring. So you can imagine how I felt this year when at 9pm the night before I boarded a plane for Zambia my computer’s hard drive crashed, I got the black screen of death. So, after a

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A Field Report from Zambia by Catherine Magill

August 11, 2011

Sorry for the long absence from DIG postings. The summer thus far has been a time of activity, transitions, and changes. Volunteers Damian and Ali Schlereth arrived in April to help out with the work in Kafue until early 2012. A wonderful group of four DIG supporters joined us for two weeks in June. Volunteer Sarah Sahlaney finished her commitment here to begin preparing for graduate studies in agriculture and development at UC-Davis in the fall. In late June, DIG’s

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My Dream of Africa Came True by Maggie Johnston

August 11, 2011

Maggie Johnston is part of the Birmingham DIG community. She is the director of Camp McDowell Environmental Program and joined DIG on this year’s Donor Trip to Zambia. As a young child, I would thumb through my father’s National Geographic magazines and dream of Africa. Can you relate? Wild giraffes, lions, zebras, elephants wandering across the plains. Half clad, dark skinned African people using primitive tools to make a living from the land. I have grown up in a world

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Sunday Afternoon in Zambia

March 22, 2011

It’s an overcast, breezy Sunday afternoon, and I just finished chopping up a large pumpkin to make into soup. I picked it up from one of the vegetable stands on the side of the road between Kafue and Lusaka yesterday. It’s such a relief to get out of the chaos and traffic of the city, pass the giant Lafarge cement factory in Chilanga and the last pothole, and then be on the slightly rolling road back home, surrounded by green

Plant Seeds That Reap Life