Zambia: Helping AIDS orphans help themselves

With tools and equipment supplied by TeleFood, children orphaned by AIDS are raising the food they need to stay healthy – and gaining teamwork and farming skills along the way.

In Zambia, a nation of just under 10 million people, more than 800 000 children are orphans – nearly 18 percent of the total child population.

The majority of these children were orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. As in other sub-Saharan countries, in Zambia the disease is having a devastating impact. Recent UN estimates put the average life expectancy at birth for Zambians at 41 years.

But AIDS is not just a health threat: it has become a major development problem. Primarily occurring in cities at first, the disease is now widespread in Africa's countryside too, where it is disrupting thousands of farming communities, cutting food production and heightening food insecurity.

It is also leaving a generation of orphans struggling to fend for themselves. In 2001, an estimated 11 million children living in sub-Saharan Africa had lost one or both parents to AIDS. Providing proper care and nutrition to these children is a major challenge.

Small farm, big results

In northern Zambia's Mansa Township, where growing numbers of AIDS orphans are struggling to survive, residents are rising to that challenge, with the help of FAO's TeleFood initiative.

To give the children a home, Mansa's Seventh-day Adventist church opened a small orphanage with donations and support from congregation members, the local Rotary Club and the Zambian Government.

With a roof over the children's heads, project organizers next tackled the question of meeting the orphans' food needs. They wanted to establish a half-hectare garden on the orphanage site that would be cultivated by the children themselves under the supervision of a qualified volunteer gardener. In this way, the children would not only enjoy a healthy diet thanks to the food they produced, but would also acquire valuable vocational skills in the process.

A small grant from TeleFood gave the project the boost it needed. The one-time investment bought seeds and other planting materials, tools such as hoes, wheelbarrows and shovels, fertilizers and a simple, small-scale drip irrigation system.

Completely self-sufficient

Now, under the careful tending of the children, the garden is flourishing, producing cabbage, eggplants, peas, green peppers, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes.

Thanks to a donation from the Rotary Club, the orphanage also acquired a one-hectare plot in a nearby village, which is being used for maize production, and maintains a small poultry coop.

"They are completely self-sufficient for vegetables, maize and poultry," says Karel Callens, an FAO nutritionist recently stationed in Mansa who is familiar with the orphanage. "They are producing enough surplus to sell at market, and are taking those proceeds and reinvesting them back into the garden. The project is now virtually self-sufficient."

Callens adds that as they work together to provide for themselves, the children are acquiring teamwork skills and farming know-how – assets they can rely on to support themselves for the rest of their lives.

"That's a pretty impressive return on a modest investment," he observes.