Building Health and Wealth
Mrs. Sobita Rokaya, one of our beneficiaries from Chainpur Municipality had a baby girl aged 3 months when she was taking Homestead Food Production training. At an instance during training when she heard that children should be exclusively breastfed for 6 months, she remembered her uncle who told to exclusively breastfeed her child in spite of low milk production. She further remembered what her uncle said that it is only the mentality that the milk produced is not sufficient to child. Training further made her concept and importance of exclusive breast feeding crystal clear. “I am lucky enough to take this training at right time which is essential for sound health of my child and my own.” says Mrs Rokaya with smile. Training motivated her to establish improved HFP garden for the production and consumption of diversified nutritious vegetables. However, being in a nuclear family she could not get sufficient time to invest in garden as she has to look after her child and her husband, Mr. Shailendra Rokaya frequently moves to filed on his job.
Its USAID-funded Suaahara program that provided her fundamental knowledge and skills to rear her child. Suaahara has proved to be of great help in order to gain knowledge on consumption of 4 eggs per week for better development of child. She looks at her 22 months old baby girl and says, “I knew to prepare porridge including green vegetables, grains, and egg/meat only due to Suaahara.” She further praises Suaahara stating that “everything I learned about rearing of child, [the] importance of nutritious food, hygiene and sanitation is because of Suaahara.” She could not resist praising Suaahara. This shy mother with little smile on her face affirms, “I grow vegetables in plot, and the concept and skill to grow them in plot was provided by Suaahara through training.”
“Everything I learned about rearing of child, [the] importance of nutritious food, hygiene and sanitation is because of Suaahara.”
She has been adopting the path shown by Suaahara that she gained before one and half year. Motivated and inspired from the training she grows vegetables like Cauliflower, Broccoli, Egg plant, Carrot, Broad Bean, Coriander and other seasonal vegetables in her garden. Not to miss, she also grows Kangkong and Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato in her garden. She has consumed vegetables from the produce of her own garden from May/June 2014 to Oct/Nov 2014. The produce was so excess that she was able to sell vegetables like carrot, broad leaf mustard, bean, brinjal, okra and coriander to market. Excluding all the expense, she has saved about NRs 16,000. Also knowing about the nutrition content of orange fleshed sweet potato and demand of its vine, she was determined to produce it in selling level. As a result, she was able to sell 900 vines earning NRs 900 in short term with less effort. This has encouraged her to further go in big level.
She recently gave birth to second child—a baby boy. And he is just 20 days old. In need to take care of her neonatal, she is planning to take rest from her garden. But she is determined that after her recuperation, she would invest some of her time in field too. Knowing her determination, her relative has agreed to work along with her in garden with promise to share the earning.
