Having been implementing many projects in various villages in India, W3W wanted to do something very unique keeping in mind two very important aspects – to empower women and contribute towards the nutritional aspect of children. Hence the project Kitchen Garden was implemented in Mirpara, a small village in the Howrah district of West Bengal near Calcutta.
Various issues had to be addressed during the implementation of the project, f.i. Imparting knowledge on intensive farming, creating the awareness of the advantages of having a kitchen garden, awareness of water management, awareness of organic farming that can be defined as complete management process which promotes and improves the health of agro system related to biodiversity due to its ecological, social and economic sustainability.
The project was a runaway success and today there are more than 120 Kitchen Gardens in and around this village called Mirpara. The highlight of the project – so much was the impact of the awareness created by W3W with regard to organic farming that Mrs.Jamuna Mondal a middle aged housewife told the W3W project team that she was determined to have a kitchen garden of her own even though she did not have any cultivatable land of her own. To the surprise of the entire W3W team, she even said that mine will be a hanging garden. Well today not only is she a proud owner of a hanging garden but also helped another friend of hers, Mrs.Gayatri Panday to setup a rooftop garden on her clay tiled rooftop. The pictures speak for themselves. So what if they do not have rose gardens? They have the attention of every passerby who stops at the first sight of the hanging garden as well as the rooftop garden but the curiosity does not end there. Everyone wants to know how these women have managed to have a garden without land for cultivation. It is an eye opener for everyone when they get to know that the garden is rooted in a two-foot by two-foot hole dug beside the wall of the house. The watering of the garden is done by the PEP as and when required. The PEP is also used for pumping water for domestic use by these women.
Today the social status of both these women have changed to a great extend. Because of the fact that the vegetables grown by these gardens are organic, these vegetables have great demand in the local market. All the kitchen garden owning women bring in an extra income into the family by selling the surplus vegetables to the local market. The nutrition intake of their children and all the family members have gone up many folds. This is because buying vegetables from the market would be very expensive for them and today they have their own vegetable gardens. Vegetables give the maximum amount of nutrition to the human body.
It was quiet a task to teach these women how to produce their own manure for their kitchen gardens. They were taught how to produce vermin compost, heap compost, liquid manure etc. They were also taught to produce their own natural pesticides with the help of garlic oil, neem oil etc. Today some of these women not only make their own manure and pesticides but also sell their produce to their neighbours and the local vegetable market as well.
Well that is what I could call Micro Enterprise isn’t it? Or shall I call it Organic Micro Enterprise?
