Look at my Garden Full of Vegetables...

Written by Melliana Layuk,
Community Development Coordinator for Health
Wahana Visi Indonesia,
North Halmahera Operational Development Office

Almost all mothers in rural communities in North Halmahera, Indonesia assisted by Wahana Visi Indonesia Operational Office know that nutritious food for children and their families is very important. But many still provide unbalanced diet for their families, such as eating white rice with only plain water, or just consume rice and fish without any vegetables.

Aware of this situation, Wahana Visi Indonesia, in collaboration with North Halmahera District Health Office and family welfare movement, provide socialization and training on processing various kinds of nutritious and balanced food for posyandu cadres, pregnant and lactating mothers and other mothers in the assisted areas.

"Actually, there is no need to make food from expensive ingredients. A varied diet of nutritious and balanced food does not have to be expensive.  We can simply use many local ingredients. The home garden produce, such as spinach, cassava, cassava leaf, batatas, bananas and corn can be processed to make nutritious food as we are making now, " Mrs. Harlina, facilitator of the nutritious food processing training session explained.

All training participants agree that they get many benefits from this event. The children they bring to the training were very pleased to taste and finish all the new variety of nutritious and balanced food.
 
As the follow up of this training, participants were given vegetable seeds, such as mustard green, eggplant, tomato and chili to be planted in their home garden. Wahana Visi Indonesia, in collaboration with District Agriculture Office, has also trained them how to plant in the home garden.
 
There are now 4 people out of 18 training participants who have managed to create a family garden in the front yard of their houses and they use the crops to make a variety of nutritious and balanced food for the family.

"Miss Melli, we now have home garden, we know how to plant the correct way. The mustard greens have already grown. Kids can eat vegetables now. There is no need to go far away to find vegetables. They are now near us at our home garden. We are now going to teach cooking skills to mothers using our own vegetables." said Mrs. Asiatin, one of the participants who benefited from the training.