Meals to Fields - Rise Against Hunger: Recent Episodes
Maria
Welcome to Meals to Fields. This podcast shares the stories of the team leading Empowering Leaders through Nutrition-Smart Agriculture (ELNA). This project is supported through a partnership between Rise Against Hunger and Lift Up the Vulnerable. Lift Up the Vulnerable exists to prevent the trafficking and oppression of vulnerable children and women in Sudan and South Sudan and empower them to be change makers in their communities. Each month, we will release a new episode. After listening, you will have the opportunity to join a live dialogue with members of the ELNA team.
Listen to Stella share about how the students enjoy their meals
“I see when the children are enjoying food. They will even come and tell the cooks 'today the food is so delicious. You prepared something good...I even want to come for a second round.' This is what the children have been saying.”
Listen to Eugenio share about how ELNA promotes self-reliance
"ELNA activities are totally different from relief. ELNA is about empowering people through giving knowledge, changing attitudes, and practicing the knowledge which they have been given. The ELNA project is about people being given knowledge to do the work on themselves; transferring their skills. I's a total paradigm shift, as opposed to where the finished products are given out. It's the same people who are involved in production of what they consume. So it's totally different from the relief."
Listen to Chelsie share a call to action about food security
*“When Ray Buchanan started this organization, it was because he saw a great need to end hunger that was right in front of him. And he's been building this legacy. Right now with the Nourishing Lives portfolio, the number one recipient of our meals are children at schools. Schools are the main people we've been targeting to deliver the meals. This project, the ELNA project, is at a school. There are many other schools that we work with, who are facing very similar challenges...
The reality is there's a fear that the meals could stop. And for a lot of places, that really happened because of COVID. In some places that happens because of natural disasters, climate change, tsunamis, flooding. Even with this own project, the ELNA project in South Sudan, when they have the rainy season, a lot of those roads are just impassable. And what happens if something prevents us from getting food to someone that they're depending on now for survival? What happens? Are we responsible for that? So it's kind of on us now to move beyond meals, and promote food security or self reliance. Meals are a great temporary solution. But relief should be short term. And our end goal should be to get our partners to ask us to leave. We want our partners to say to us, ‘Hey, thanks for the offer. But we actually don't need the meals anymore because we're growing so much of our own food'. All these great success stories we've been hearing from ELNA. That's impact. That is food security."*
Listen to Bryan share about locally-led partnership
"The people of South Sudan are being told that they will never be able to grow their own food. That they must be reliant on food assistance or foreign aid being brought into those locations. The people at Hope for South Sudan - the leaders there - have a vision for the future of South Sudan to be self reliant. To have that knowledge on being able to grow their own food and to feel that pride of being able to experience the labor of growing something from a seed and then filling yourself filling your stomach with that same food. It's the courage of Peter and Eugenio and Stella and Alex, the people at Hope for South Sudan, [because] they were the ones who wanted to bring that self reliance to the students. That's the way that we should be operating - by really listening to our partners."
Chelsie is the Nutrition Lead at Rise Against Hunger. Bryan is the Director of Technical Programming at Rise Against Hunger.
Listen to Eugenio share about the vision for Hope for South Sudan
"And self reliance simply means putting our institution - Hope for South Sudan - at a position where they're able to sustain themselves without depending on any donor aid, and in such a way that we can use the agricultural products, which we get from our farm, even to sell in the market to cover any other cost which we cannot be able to cover directly through agriculture. So self-reliance simply just means Hope for South Sudan stand[s] on its own feet, as opposed to depending on donor hand."
Listen to Eugenio share about the limitations of food assistance.
"For many years, South Sudan has been in war. South Sudan and Sudan have been in war. And for the longest time, so many relief agencies came in to work in South Sudan. But then, unfortunately, as they give out the relief, it became like a permanent thing for everyone to believe that the best way to help people is by giving them resources, giving them food. And so there is, to some extent, relief is just supposed to [be a] cushion from some aftershock...for a very short time."
Meet Eugenio. Eugenio leads programming at Lift Up the Vulnerable. Eugenio builds operational excellence and invests in values-centered culture across Lift Up the Vulnerable's network of schools. He is the project manager for ELNA. He ensures the project is on-track for Hope for South Sudan to achieve food self-reliance. Eugenio envisions ELNA as one step toward a self-reliant South Sudan that is food secure.
Listen to Alex share about how nutrition & agriculture link
“Nutrition and agriculture move together. Without agriculture, how are we going to also have better health? ...Because we first need to produce what we need to use it for ourselves for our consumption.”
Listen to Stella share about the improved student diet
"[In] previous years, we used to cook only beans, rice, posho and green grams. And maybe greens just once a week for our children. Now we have greens even four times in a week. Meat, eggplants, and okra we mix with the groundnut paste. The children enjoy. Even before they eat, when the cooks are making [food], they will be like, 'That smell. Ah, you guys what’s in the kitchen today? I can smell something'. You can even see the appearance of children. They are very healthy.”
Listen to Stella Share about local solutions to malnutrition.
“We kept measuring [students experiencing malnutrition] every week. And of course, as we measure them every week, it was to our surprise that we have seen most of the children are discharged after taking the Tom Brown [porridge]...We’re advising people in the community to [introduce it]. They can even make it in their homes to their children. The Tom Brown [porridge] has helped. We have seen the changes."
Meet Stella. Stella is the child welfare officer and nutrition lead is the farm manager at Hope for South Sudan. Stella is a leader and advocate on the school campus to ensure every student is healthy. She coordinates closely with the kitchen and agriculture teams to menu plan based on what is available on the farm. Through the school clinic, she tracks student health outcomes.
Listen to Alex share about self-reliance
“Self-reliance means...[you don't need to be] supported time and again. It is just a way of saying 'I need to be independent, I need to do something which at the end of the day, I don't [need to again] look for support'. That is why the project goals one of the project goals is self reliance”
Listen to Alex share about student participation
“Many of [the students] come voluntarily to help in the farm... They are coming also to harvest vegetables like eggplant, onion, tomato, cabbage, amaranthus and sukuma wiki [leafy greens]. I explain to them: we produce this because of you. These are your foods. It is our collective responsibility to learn."
Meet Alex. Alex is the farm manager at Hope for South Sudan, which is the school implementing ELNA project. Alex leads an agriculture team who cultivate over 200 acres of school farm. The agriculture team is at the frontline to ensure the school achieves food self-reliance. This means all the food consumed at the school is either grown at the school or purchased from the sale of agricultural commodities in the local market.
Listen to Peter share about how food security & conflict link.
"In this community, if people have food, [they have the] option to send their children to school; the option to start businesses that will better their livelihood, [rather] than to get involved in issues that can bring insecurity in the area. People have to be secure in terms of food production in the area. This will lessen the conflict erupting because people are scrambling over the few resources that are available within the area.”
Listen to Peter share about community self-reliance.
“ELNA project is actually is the best option because we see it from the aspect of sustainability and we also see it from the aspect of empowering people...even if there is a problem in the future they have a long lasting solution, [rather] than just to give relief, which can be a short term solution.”
Listen to Peter share about school-grown meals.
"The diversity we are experiencing with the food grown within the institution...is more enjoyable now. Children can now experience a variety of vegetables being prepared in the kitchen. The processing of the food even involves the children. They see something tangible - they see it happening."
Meet Peter. Peter is the principal at Hope for South Sudan, a residential school with over 400 students. The school is the site of ELNA project. Peter leads the school's team of educators, welfare officers, chefs, and farm managers who are working toward food security at the school. Peter envisions ELNA project as a seed for greater self-reliance in the community and across South Sudan.