Stories from the Lake Zone

What do you do when you have some excellent agricultural training material that is helping farmers double or triple their harvests, but your budget only allows for you to visit and help ten communities per year out of the 120 villages in the area? You start training people by radio. That’s what is happening with World Renew’s partner, the Sengerema Informal Sector Association (SISA), in Tanzania.

For the last three years, SISA has been implementing a Land Rights and Food Security project through World Renew’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security (SAFS) grant. In that project, farmers in our target communities are learning many new improved agricultural techniques that double or triple their harvests. The farmers are also learning how to get titles for their land so that they have the security to be able to invest in it.

The training has had a big impact, especially for selected participants who were part of this training from the beginning in 2010. World Renew and SISA decided together to try a new approach with hopes of reaching more people across the district by airing radio-based training programs. Radio Sengerema is now broadcasting two weekly 45-minute programs covering land rights, food security & improved agricultural practices, and ‘Kilimo kwa Njia ya Mungu’ Swahili for Farming God’s Way. The programs are produced by SISA officials, SAFS stakeholders such as agriculture extension officers and local government officials, and other farmers, who then talk about the agricultural practices and skills they learn from the project. The radio programs are broadcast twice a week (Wednesday and Friday evenings) from 11:15pm to midnight, a convenient time for many people who work during the day but are at their home to listen to the radio in the evening.

There are five SISA members who are skilled in providing training about agriculture issues through the radio programs. During a recent program evaluation, we learned that many people in the district have heard the broadcasts and increased their understanding of agriculture, land rights, and food security practices.

By putting the Sengerema Radio learning into practice, farmers began to use compost and cow manure on their fields, and began to make and apply bio-fertilizer to boost crop growth. The District Agricultural Officer told us that he talked with farmers who listen to SISA’s Radio Sengerema agricultural programs and found that about eight out of every ten farmers had changed their attitude about farming and decided to use better seeds, compost and cow manure, bio-fertilizer, and bio-hormone. Almost all of the area farms are now doing very well with these new practices in place. You can even see the difference by looking at the crops in fields compared to three years ago. Radio Sengerema donates the broadcast production and air time to SISA at no cost in Mwanza after our four month deputation in because of the important role it is playing in transforming farms and communities in the district. Information is power, and Radio Sengerema is working with World Renew to bring change among the Tanzanian people through this program.

Praise:

Our baseline assessment to measure current conditions in 14 communities as we start the 5-year CIDA program went very well. We now have a much better idea of the challenges people are facing and their current living situation, and can better plan our work to address these areas.
New funding from Food Resources Bank (FRB) in the US will allow our partner SISA to prepare a formal land rights training manual and a land rights conflict resolution manual to share our powerful training material with many more communities in Tanzania. These are much needed and frequently requested training tools that we hope to finish by June.
Our family has settled back in comfortably to life in Mwanza after our four month deputation in North America

Prayer:

Pray for God’s continued guidance in our planning meetings and in our work in Tanzania
Pray for safety in the many travels planned for this year related to program evaluations, community training and visitations, World Renew meetings, etc…
Pray for peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians in Tanzania (events of the recent weeks and months indicate growing hostility between the two religions).
Improved electricity supply so that the economy and our work can operate effectively.

Thank you for your prayers and support and the role that you play in bringing transformation to the people of Tanzania!

May God bless all of you abundantly,