By Alberr Bass
Trust Agency For Rural Development (TARUD), in collaboration with United Purpose (UP) and other partnering stakeholders, on Wednesday, 17th July, 2019, organised a cooking demonstration at Gunjur community Health Centre.
The event, which targeted lactating mothers, pregnant women and children and graced by United Purpose’s close collaborators, such as National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) and National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI), was part of efforts to further strengthen the Balu Timaringo’s project of United Purpose.
The purpose of the Gunjur cooking demonstration, as Mansa Banko Online News gathered, is to encourage women to feed their children with simple nutritious meals and for themselves to continue to consume simple nutritious meals from the biofortified foods. It aims at introducing a number of simple innovations on how to get a good diet for children and adults, on a regular basis, from easily available cooking materials.
Mr.Tony Jansen, Country Director of United Purpose gave a brief historical background of the NGO, stating that United Purpose (formally called Concerned Universal) has been in The Gambia for more than 25 years. The NGO works on issues around development with focus on agriculture and commercialization of agriculture.
Jansen revealed that a few years ago, they realised that there was really a strong need in The Gambia to look into the nutrition challenges that were faced by the population, particularly among children. This led to the introduction of the “Balu Timaringo/ Bio fortification project”.
The project aims to look at how agriculture can improve the nutrition of the population, particularly of the pregnant women, mothers and children.
According to the Country Director, the Balu Timaringo project is implemented by United Purpose with support from the European Union (EU) and is working through 10 local partner organisations across the country.
The project, with the aim of addressing the problem of macro nutrient deficiency, is promoting three different things;
a. Orange flesh sweet potato: rich in vitamin A, is being promoted to replace the white flesh potato because the orange type is much higher in nutrient.
b. African leafy vegetables: which is not new to people, but the project is trying to introduce new ways to consume those foods and reinforce the traditional ways of consuming them.
c. Millet: is a very nutritious crop that people consume. The project wants to introduce new varieties rich in iron (biofortified varieties) of millet.
The UP Country chief disclosed that, so far they have very good responses from farmers about the new varieties introduced to them by the project.
He pointed out that there is a whole range of agriculture interventions that is scaling up production of these crops and reaching out to the population across the country through 300 mothers clubs and a similar number of women’s gardens that are producing the new varieties, and then the mother’s clubs that are training about nutrition.
The United Purpose senior official in the country further noted that there’s a lot of collaboration involved in implementing the Biofortification project; “thus, the NGO is working with the Ministry of Agriculture, NARI, NaNA and health services to provide people with an integrated message of agriculture for nutrition and good food for health.”
Mr. Ousman Jammeh, Project Director of Balu Timaringo on his part stressed that Gambia has many food varieties, but cannot fully utilise the nutritional value of it.
“It is on this background that the Balu Timaringo project was introduced in order to strengthen the health of the people through consumption of bio fortified foods,” he added, while noting that the project’s main target is to reinforce the nutritional health of pregnant women, mothers and children, particularly children under 5 years, Jammeh said the project also embarks on sensitisation on the need to consume biofortified food to enhance nutritional improvement.
Mr. Malang Janneh, Nutrition Field Officer for Western Two (NaNA) enthused that they are partnering with Universal Purpose because their target group of intervention is similar (women and children).
He, however, lamented that The Gambia is blessed with nutritious local food varieties, but unfortunately we choose imported food stuff over our local ones.
He argued that some of the imported foods are the cause of some common diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer among others.
“On the contrary, our local foods are not only nutritious, but can also support our health,” the Nutrition Field Officer echoed, as he enjoined the participants to consume more of their local food varieties, including the newly introduced biofortified food crops in order to improve their nutrition.
In his concluding remarks, Ton Senghor, Head of Horticulture, NARI, thanked the various stakeholders present at the cooking demonstration for their selfless efforts in ensuring the success of the event, particularly TARUD and the people of Gunjur.
Ton stated that the project’s quest to multiply the newly introduced biofortified crops is parallel with his institution’s work; therefore, partnering with the project couldn’t be more relevant. He also revealed that NARI’s collaboration with Universal Purpose has resulted to the establishment of 5 screen houses, where the new biofortified crops are kept, multiplied before distributing it to partnering farmer groups for further multiplication in their various community gardens.
He encouraged the participants to implement the project’s objectives at their respective homes and save themselves and their family’s wealth for treatment at hospitals, underlining that ‘prevention is better than cure’ as preached by the project.
Helping poorest Farmers
United Purpose helps the poorest farmers to grow enough food and earn a decent living. We help by: improving horticultural, livestock and agro-forestry practices; providing access to potable water; encouraging access to new markets for fresh local produce; promoting micro gardening; nurturing new initiatives- such as reduced firewood use through improved fuel efficient stoves.
