Food and Nutrition Security is a greater challenge for the poor and marginalized due to its unavailability and high cost. The need is to understand the food and agricultural systems that influence its availability, affordability, and consumption.

Caritas India has been working on this for the past one and a half years in Gujarat and sees a wide range of opportunities. The project Sanjivani works on diversification and maximization of food crops and realization of rights and entitlements with four Diocesan Social Service Societies in 4 districts covering 42,270 population belonging to marginalized communities i.e. SC, ST, and OBCs. 

A few examples from Sanjivani targeted to small & marginal farmers and landless farm-dependent include: nutrition kitchen garden; multi-cropping, traditional crop cultivation, and Moringa plantation are very promising. Each of these outcomes of the project was possible through initiating people’s campaigns, mobilizing resources and volunteers, and dialoguing with nature and duty bearers.

To evaluate the success to the project, Rev. Stanislaus Fernandes-Arch Bishop-Baroda; Rev. Rethenasawamy-Bishop -Ahmedabad; Fr. (Dr.) Jolly-Assistant Ex. Director, Caritas India; Dr. Saju-Zonal Manager -WZ, all four Diocesan Directors and staff members and few project participants actively discussed the project outcomes at Ahmedabad on November 18, 2019.

Sanjivani not only helped the communities in achieving household-level food and nutrition sufficiency but also encouraged them to claim their rights on the food and nutrition security schemes and programmes implemented by the government. There is stark evidence of success in terms of 496 women farmers developing and managing their nutrition kitchen gardens to have increased access to green and fresh vegetable availability from 3 to 6 months. The community has increased the availability of food to cater to the local Anganwadis, and the surplus is sold in the market to get additional income for the families. Women farmers worked tirelessly and brought 351 acres of farmland under multi-crop cultivation and another 299 farming families have initiated traditional crop cultivation. One of the important outcomes is the plantation of Moringa oleifera (drumstick tree) by the adolescent and 5 years old girls in their names which are been harvested by them.

The success of the nutrition kitchen gardens has made ripple effects not only around neighboring villages but to Government departments like ICDS, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) and Agriculture Universities. Agriculture University and KVK officials visited project villages to witness the kitchen gardens and encouraged project participants to sell kitchen garden produce to KVK with better price i.e. Rs. 70/ kg instead of the market. 

Learning such a positive impact of the project, church leaderships appreciated the CI support and encouraged partner functionaries to promote such interventions on a larger scale in the villages and further said that “each convent, parish, even seminary should develop their own nutrition kitchen garden for healthy vegetables and Be the change you want to see”.