Bolivia | Brazil: Urban gardens – where more than just good food grows
By growing fruit and vegetables in even the smallest of spaces, families are improving their health, their income and their children’s future.
With your donation, you will strengthen local urban agriculture and support Misereor’s global work to promote healthy diets and food sovereignty.
- Latin & Central America
Urban agriculture opens up new prospects
El Alto, Bolivia: Fresh fruit and vegetables are often unaffordable for people living in the poor suburbs. Many households have to spend more than 80 per cent of their meagre income on basic foodstuffs alone. Children suffer most from this unbalanced, inadequate diet: they are more susceptible to infections, recover more slowly from illness, and their physical and mental development is impaired.
Abdiel and Abner are lucky: the brothers from El Alto, together with their family, have transformed a small, dry patch of wasteland into a green oasis. They were supported in this by Misereor’s partner organisation, FOCAPACI. Here, vegetables, fruit, herbs – and even flowers – grow. Good food for body and soul. The boys have been helping out diligently from a very young age – with gardening, but also with cooking and baking, and with selling everything the family doesn’t eat themselves at the market.
Their mother acts as an advocate and helps other people in El Alto to grow healthy food in their backyards. This also strengthens good neighbourly relations. The city, where poverty has often led to violence and crime in the past, is becoming safer and a better place to live.
This is how Misereor’s partner organisations operate:
This is how a starter bed, just one square metre in size, can spark a movement that brings the whole city to life:
- Practical know-how: How do I grow strawberries in an empty bottle? How do I use water sparingly? How do I make my own compost and plant protection products? In our partners’ training courses, families learn everything they need to know about organic farming in the smallest of spaces.
- Fair marketing: Our partners connect urban growers and build up local customer bases and distribution channels.
- Civil rights and participation: They empower residents to confidently represent their interests and their right to healthy food, even when dealing with local authorities.
Would you like to find out more about our charity projects? Then read our magazine “Weiter.wirken” now. The magazine about and for the people who make a difference at Misereor.
When making a donation by bank transfer, please quote the reference “S63404 Bolivia/Brazil: Urban Gardens” in the payment reference field. This lets us know which project is particularly close to your heart; your contribution will be channelled as a general donation towards this work and Misereor’s global mission.
To ensure that your donation has an impact in the long term, Misereor uses a small proportion for important administration an related tasks. This way, we make sure that projects are selected carefully and implemented responsibly and that their effects are regularly monitored. Should it not be possible to use your donation as planned, we will use it where it is currently needed most.
Our local partner organisations
FOCAPACI
Misereor's partner organisation in El Alto, FOCAPACI, is currently supporting around 650 families in this project. FOCAPACI teaches people this form of agriculture and helps them to commercialise it.
Misereor is working on similar projects with its Brazilian partner organisations REDE and AS-PTA in Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro.
Suzanne Lemken
Donor Communications
- Telephone
- +49 241 442127
- suzanne.lemken@misereor.de
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