Types of farms

8 acres of productive spaces filled with ~150 species (medicinal and edible), combining pollinator friendly spaces and agroforestry demonstrations utilising agroecology principles rooted in permaculture design.

Objectives

• Providing healthy and accessible spaces that are inspirational to all that utilise the facility.
• Creating multiple demonstrations – managing grey water, fuel wood sources close to place of need, building soil health on site with direct sources of biomass, clean cooking, food forests, agroecological focused production to generate income
• Reducing maternal and neonatal deaths
• Connecting health education to permaculture/environmental and agroecological education to make the connections apparent
• Providing education and direction on creating dietary diverse, nutritious and delicious meals for all
• Linking an agroecologically based food system to health outcomes through nutritious foods, education, active participation and implementation 
• Aid in reforestation of the fastest growing per-urban area in the country through the triple seedling program – for every baby that is born patientsreceive three tree seedlings

The project focuses on Integrating Human Health and Environmental Health purposefully by carefully designed spaces that highlight the relationships between health care and the health of our environment. 

The project aims to improve land-use practices through agroecology principles.  It aims to increase understanding on environmental stewardship and accessing healthier foods, a better understanding of the food system, improving raw water quality, biodiversity restoration through active biomimicry in human spaces, improving ecosystem services, promoting soil health initiatives, and an overall increase in mitigation and adaptation efforts to climate change. 

The project promotes environmental education around a wide range of topics from food security and its connection to nutrition and positive health outcomes, the integration of diverse garden spaces within communities, managing waste and building soils, preparation of diverse foods, climate change impacts and how to build resilience, the importance of tree planting from a household to landscape level,  managing natural resources efficiently, and the integration of traditional knowledge. This extends to all teaching being made accessible in the vernacular language. The process is participatory at all levels ensuring respectful maternity care, improving health outcomes (decrease neonatal and maternal deaths) and encouraging an improved quality of life for all. This is accomplished by promoting dietary diversity and influencing how food is grown, active cooking demonstrations and designs that increase productivity, improving a range of habitats thereby ensuring the sustainability of food systems. The aim is to improve access to healthier nutritious food, making food affordable and accessible to everyone and contradict the notion that healthy food is expensive. 

The project, strategically placed at a local community hospital, is a center of excellence for learning and demonstrations linking human health outcomes to environmental health outcomes overcoming a siloed approach to solving multiple issues in Malawi. The centre functions as a centre for the community to sensitise all on the variety of interventions including the impact of climate change on health.

Activities

• Daily health talks couple with permaculture design and agroecological education
• Daily healing garden walks that are either silent, meditative, or interactional and are designed to improve observational abilities and hone into all the senses
• Weekly compost making sessions that are connected to how to grow your biomass on site
• Plant identification for increasing intercropping and crop rotation within small spaces
• Home gardens and community gardens to increase accessibility to foods rich in micronutrients
• How to cook for nutrient deficiencies and integrate micronutrients that are readily available
• Garden design competitions where participants are encouraged to identify five different designs in the gardens and create their own garden space
• Weekly cooking demonstrations that connect seasonal harvests to meal preparation
• Three times a week feeding program that covers patients, post operative mothers, adolescent mothers, and participants in the nutrition program
• Weekly food packs for nutrition and adolescent mothers to address food insecurity within households
• Weekly workshops on the following – tree planting, agroforestry, garden design, climate change, soil health, managing greywater, clean cooking, fuelwood alternatives, menu design
• Triple Seedling distribution – connecting the birth of a child to tree seedlings and care for the environment
• Health centers: create Working demonstration linking agroecological principles to improve human health (healthcare perspective)

Effects and Impacts

Adolescent Mother Program

• Over three years, have successfully graduated 386 adolescent mothers through the program that each participated in a 2 year outpatient program influencing nutrition, education and other aspects from 20 weeks pregnant to when their children are 1 year old. 75% of them have accessed family planning alternatives, 40% are enrolled in a livelihoods program that focuses on skills building, and 30% have gone back to school under a scholarship program funded by the program

Nutrition Program

• From January 2024 where the program had 21 participants to currently hosting 156 acutely malnourished children and their guardians – AS an outpatient program, mother/guardians and children come weekly – they receive a meal, foodpack, education session and engage in a creative activity.
• 5 community gardens established that are managed by mothers and guardians in their groups growing a diverse array of plants and integrating agroecological methods
• 5 small enterprises created that make and sell soya milk to both increase nutrition but provide income sources

Feeding Program

In 2024 this extended to post operative mothers, women in labour and delivery and mothers with premature babies to reduce the stress of food preparation.

Evaluation methods 

 A robust information collection system within all programs to enable successful evaluation every 6 months.

Nutrition program participants are monitored weekly in sections.

Adolescent mothers receive spot check visits every 6 months.

WOmen who stayed in the maternity waiting home for over 2 weeks are also followed up every 6 months to see if there is a change in behaviour.

Results 

 25000 tree seedlings distributed in 2024 as part of the triple seedling program.

• Wide range of  Patients sensitized on dietary diversity:
  • • Soya Milk 1200 Litres prepared
    • Tree Planting  4200
    • Composting 2220
    • Garden Design  2200
    • Beneficial Plants  4272
    • Nutrition Trainings  5760
    • 96 agroecology classes to maternity waiting home patients
    • Nutrition Program – 2024
• 2968 meals provided weekly to approximately 136 participants and 136 guardians
• 3466 kg of a micronutrient rich porridge mix provided

• Feeding Program – 2024

• • • 10200 meals prepared – patients, guardians and staff
    • ~220 adolescent mothers were a part of the program in 2024, receiving  1168 meals and 1200kg of a nutritionally diverse porridge

Lessons learned 

• Programs require well thought out long term interventions to truly impact change at multiple levels:
• Decision making
• Diversity in diets
• Health choices
• Implementation` of agroecological principles within a homestead
• Partnerships with the Ministry of Health and community leaders is critical in influencing change at multiple levels within the healthcare system. This extends to the integration of nutrition into healthcare at multiple levels
• Engagement with the environment is important to understand how it affects health and mental well-being
• Shared knowledge approach and combining that with what exists to make it applicable
• Designing spaces within a healthcare setting require both time and patience and all learnings should be shared whilst connected to local and indigenous knowledge
• All information should be available for multiple literacy levels and in the vernacular language
• It is very important to connect human health to environmental health, this is also in line with the global shift towards purposefully connecting agroecology to health outcomes
• Combining multiple service lines (healthcare, maternal and child health, nutrition, environment and agriculture)aids in overcoming barriers to a siloed approach
• A successful demonstration for all – not many understand what a holistic system that integrates agroecological principles to build resilience to climate looks like.

Enabling conditions

• Unified policies across the healthcare and agricultural system
• An improved and open platform to share information on activities, including learnings – living library
• The connection between climate and agroecology are intricately linked and agroecology is a response to an increasing number of climatic shocks – are there enabling policies for this in country
• Co-creation and co-designing solutions should be integrated from the beginning of the project to ensure uptake and sustainability
• Linking similar thought processes and organisation
• Sustainable food systems are directly linked to agrobiodiversity and are a right to all. 

Limiting factors 

• Aligning goals of the project with local/national/regional goals 
• An increased number of agroecological and food system projects – none of them work together
• All projects are doing there own thing and not actually working together or sharing learnings
• Knowledge and awareness on integrating agroecological principles effectively within a health care setting 
• holistic and comprehensive approaches are shunned
• Lack of capital to create sustainability 
• Time limits with projects based on funding cycles directly impact the sustainability and longevity of impact. There needs to be a shift in thought on how projects are financed, sustained and the time investment. 
• Results on projects as such that are tackling mammoth challenges require time – thinking through impacts and results above and beyond 10+ years
• Monitoring frameworks that are details and applicable, without focusing on targets that have a single touchpoint

Project description on Texas Children webpage, see here. 

Afshan Omar, Director, Systems Resilience – Malawi Growth Poles Project:  afshan.omar@thepalladiumgroup.com  and Regenerative Permaculture Co-ordinator, Area 25 Community Hospital, Baylor foundation, Malawi, afshanloom@icloud.com 

Picture credits: Afshan Omar