Food Agriculture and Nutrition Clubs (FAN)

Once the CHC has completed Stage 1. Training in Health promotion, Water and Sanitation and if funds permit, Africa AHEAD moves onto Stage 2 of the AHEAD Approach:  Food Agriculture and Nutrition.

CHC members who have received their certificate for completing all 20 health promotion session, qualify  to join a ‘FAN Club’ (Food Agriculture and Nutrition) as part of a community nutrition garden. The programme provides much needed fencing to start the garden off, to protect vegetables being eaten by  livestock. Each member is   each allocated around 5 vegetable beds for their own family, which they must tend themselves. They are given seeds and start up equipment.

Good Nutrition through a balance diet

Standard Activities undertaken by Food Agriculture and Nutrition Clubs

A group of around 50-100 members are give a large communal plot (usually 1-2 hectares) by the village head near a communal water point.The members clear the plot and prepare the ground. Each CHC member is allocated 5 beds to grow vegetables.

Care for the Vulnerable:

A communal Nutrition garden is  a resource for the whole community, revamping a positive cultural practice that was common in the old days – the chief’s plot whereby the able bodied contributed their efforts to supply extra vegetables  for the vulnerable people of the community i.e widows / orphans, or elderly, disabled or infirm.

Live Fencing:

Traditional euphorbia hedging is grown to protect gardens from livestock.

Medicinal Herbs:

Africa AHEAD has developed Training material and can offer training on 30 basic herbs with practice on preparation of remedies and their individual uses. This is particularly useful for HIV/AIDS programmes where it is a practical way to relieve the stress of untreated symptoms.

 

Vegetables:

Every health club member is expected to grow a range of vegetables  and to plant fruit trees to ensure production of food throughout the year so they can maintain a balanced diet. They are trained in organic growing methods, such as inter-cropping to maintain the nitrogen in the soil, and fertility trenching with compost to ensure high productivity.

Sustainable Livelihoods:

Women in FAN clubs in Zimbabwe have kept their families going in times of extreme economic collapse due to food growing within the CHC. One women reported she had even managed to building onto her home from the sale of tomatoes in a time of rampant inflation.

Sale of surplice produce enables women to provide for their families as well as ensure that they have a balanced diet. This also enables circulation of currency within the village. It enables women to support more of their children to attend school, so a foreseen consequence maybe more girl children at school.

Balanced Diet and Weaning:

Practical training focuses on how to provide a balanced diet as well as safe weaning practice. Women bring all the types of food they have a home and sort them into the food groups. Then a general discussion on recipes and how to diversify the food types so that there is good family nutrition.

Preservation of  Food:

We also train women to dry fruit and vegetables so that their families have a balanced diet all the year round from their own produce. We also have encouraged hygienic drying of fish and meat for protein with appropriate technologies which can be easily made at village level.

Self sufficient and Resilient one year after Cyclone ravaged their land

Recently (2020) a FAN club in Chipinge which had been assisted by Africa AHEAD to start a CHC and then a FAN club after Cyclone Idai had destroyed their livelihood recorded this home video of their nutrition garden and sent it to us to share with the general public.  They present a role play  to explain how they made their garden so sucesssful using organic growing methods. This is taken four months after the AA staff have left and demonstrates how they havetaken ownership of this project.