1. What?
This project supports building of a mixed crop and stock farm for the Amani Children’s Home in Moshi, Tanzania and builds on the great fundraising efforts of Amani friends in Sarasota, Florida who kick-started this project a year ago. Hopefully, when the funds are secured, the buildings built, the seeds planted and the animals acquired, Kiladeda Farm will be a fully functional place of agricultural education as well as a source of valuable food for hundreds of kids. Together with our friends in Florida, we envision this farm with a classroom, a barn with a couple of cows and a few goats, a coop with 50 chicken, plots with corn, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, green peppers, spinach, eggplants and watermelons, as well as mango, orange, avocado, banana and papaya trees. We also want to secure the funds for at least one year of maintenance costs, as well as the salaries for a teacher and a security guard.
2. Why?
The idea to propose the farm project emerges from the fact that some of the children Amani children`s home rescues from the streets are not capable of formal school education setting due to various learning challenges they have experienced before and when living on the streets. Some of the children have been in the streets to the extent that it is difficult for them to adjust to a formal class setting; instead they are more conversant having interactions in an informal kind of activities that allow much of their physical engagement and less mental work. In addition, an estimated 70-80% of the children at Amani children`s home come from rural settings where farming and livestock keeping are the main livelihood activities.
Setting up a real farm, with mixed crops and stock, would offer multiple benefits for the lives of the Amani children. Most importantly, they would have a place to learn how to get most out of their land and spread that knowledge when re-united with their families or when starting a one of their own. It would also allow the caregivers to increase the interest of the kids with a practical work in the field. And finally, the produces of their own farm would go a long way in securing healthy and varied additions to the kids meals.
3. Where?
Amani has a small farm approximately 2 acres, located 1.5 km away from the centre, which the children and staff (caregivers) have been farming maize (corn) only once a year. Despite the farm being well-placed near a permanent Kiladeda river flow that can offer reliable irrigation and mixed crop production, little has been done to utilize this potential resource, mainly due to limited funds. In addition, around the village where the farm is located, the local government authorities could offer professional agricultural and livestock extension services when contacted to support the farm project.
4. When?
As we speak, figuratively speaking 🙂
Lot of work has already been done. There is now a chain link fence around the plot, the irrigation has been extracted from the Kiladeda river, terraces built. The frames for the buildings to host the classroom and security guards office are in place, thanks to, among others, the students from VTI Brugge in Belgium who spent a couple of weeks in the late October and early November helping with the construction. Next steps are ready to be taken pending the securing of the funds.
5. How?
Only with your help. The needs of the children in the region by far exceed the available funds. By helping build an agricultural education center you wouldn’t only be giving a one-time help; you would be investing into the future of local families, helping them learn how to use their land more efficiently. You can stroll through are little “farm shop” and see if there is anything there to your liking and your budget. Any help is a huge difference maker.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact either the Children’s Home directly or us over here at Friends of Amani Germany. Please understand if we don’t answer immediately – Internet in Moshi is not always available and here in Germany we are all volunteers with our day jobs (and some of us have spent better parts of our free time lately getting this page up). But we will answer and we will answer as soon as possible and we are always happy to field your questions, be they about this project, about our organization or about children’s home in general.