As appeared in The Record
November 16, 2010
BY VALERIE HILL, RECORD STAFF

Despite the barrage of horror stories coming out of Afghanistan, for one group of women living in the northern part of the country there is hope and it all started with a little kitchen garden and a group of Canadian women.

The Mennonite Economic Development Associates in Waterloo, commonly known as MEDA, has been helping more than 2,000 women in the Parwan Province extend their gardens to not only feed their families, but produce enough to sell at the markets. The success of the $4-million, four-year project, dubbed Through the Garden Gate, has increased both the self esteem and income for the women and also given them a measure of respect in the community, an uncommon honour in the strictly patriarchal society.

“When we went in 2007, the country was trying to recover from the conflicts,” said Helen Loftin, the Afghanistan project manager. “Agriculture has been devastated. There is a loss of farmland, loss of knowledge. Farmers were killed.” Parwan is an area that is relatively stable, added Loftin, though security issues still exist.

Garden Gate aimed to build up both the quantity and the quality of the food produced in the family’s garden plots which are the women’s responsibility while the men tend the fields. In a country where the average annual income is $250 U.S. every carrot, every tomato is vital to the family’s survival.

Overall, the project infused a tremendous amount of change into each household, increasing their assets by 226 per cent. Assets are broken into two categories: productive and non-productive. On the productive side are items such as mobile phones, ploughs, sewing machines, bicycles, motorcycles, generators and tools whereas non-productive items would include more luxury items such as television sets, carpets, automobiles and refrigerators.

Perhaps more importantly, the women now have more mobility and their families have enough money for health care and to send the children to school. But before they could even get started on Garden Gate, there was one important step: get approval from the men in the village by respectfully explaining how the project would work and how it could benefit each family as well as the community. They were only rejected by one village.

Loftin said that right from the start there was support and the women were eager to learn. “They understand what they are capable of,” Loftin said, adding “Afghan women are not shy about what they want. They’re survivors. They’re the toughest women in the world.”

When the project launched in 2007, it accepted 90 groups living in nine villages as part of the project. In each of the years following the launch, Loftin’s group would work with three new villages. Within that group they also trained 90 lead farmers and one facilitator for each village for a total of 2,349 women who also received literacy, numeracy and business training.

The Afghan women learned about drip irrigation, solar drying, fertilization, weeding and planting in rows. Ann Gordon, a senior consultant, said “it was just a revelation to them, planting in rows.” As well they were taught to trellis grapes and tomatoes and how to grade the produce they would be sending off to market.

Everything Canadian gardeners take for granted has been new to the Afghan women. “They’ve become so much more sophisticated in the last couple of years,” said communications manager, Linda Whitmore.

Each garden plot measured roughly 10 by five meters, designed to produce what Loftin’s group calls target crops: cucumbers, carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and grapes.

Gordon said they have also built “varying degrees of greenhouses” using studs and plastic. Loftin added, “If you can produce them (vegetables) in off season, you can get really high prices.” As well, the women were shown how to create underground storage for their produce, allowing them to send produce to market off season.

The Garden Gate project was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency while Loftin’s organization contributed over $500,000.

“We’re very frugal,” she said with a laugh. “There are funds left over. If we had additional funds then we could extend the project.” The Canadian women are now thinking big, moving beyond the staples produced thus far. Adding fruit crops such as apricots and almonds could dramatically change the lives of thousands of Afghan women, and therefore their families, but there is concern. Loftin said, “The current uncertainty about what Canada is doing in Afghanistan is impacting our project - CIDA will end the project next year.”

To come this far and have the project dry up would be heartbreaking for the Canadians. Loftin said the Garden Gate has changed lives economically and has had unexpected social benefits.

“The women find the project has allowed them to interact among themselves,” she said. “Families are talking to families. The community is strengthened.” An additional bonus has been the effect on the children. “Children are seeing the women taking leadership.”

In a country where women, by age 45 to 50, are considered to old, life has never been easy, at least not until a group of Canadian women gave them a hand up.

“This is a good news story of Afghanistan,” said Loftin. “That’s the story that needs to be told.”

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