Supporting Parents With Agricultural Inputs Within The ECD Communities
To promote positive livelihood and nutrition for children and communities hosting the ECD program in the Lamwo district, APPCO introduced an initiative to supply parents with agricultural inputs. This was meant to enhance the feeding program within the ECD schools.
SCHOOL FEEDING:
The school feeding program is one of the programs that had not ever existed in some of the ECD centres at the time that APPCO started implementing the project which was identified during the re-assessment of schools for the re-opening.
However, through parent participation in meetings and community discussions, a strategy for supporting the school food program was developed. Parents were asked to contribute to the campaign through an action plan. Some of the supplies donated by the parents included maize flour and sugar for porridge. This made it easy to kick start the feeding program. Because the parents championed the effort and demonstrated a willingness to support the program, APPCO provided support to them, including agriculture inputs and technical experience, to address the feeding program as well as to improve the family’s economic condition.
SEED DISTRIBUTION
As the farming season began, parents were overjoyed when they receives the seeds. The seeds were delivered to parent support groups in the communities to help them increase their income-generating capacity at the family level while simultaneously providing a long-term solution to the ECD centre feeding problem.
“Now that APPCO has supported us with seeds, we assure you that in the coming terms, our children will be having porridge and lunch at school as it will also help us to concentrate in the gardens as it was previously hard because we could leave gardens early to go and prepare food for our children.” One parent stated during seed distribution in Aoi ECD centre. Over 500 homes have benefited from the agricultural seeds support, which included introducing parents to new ways of smart agriculture, such as the use of nursery beds and kitchen gardens to increase the productivity of their produce.
