Helping orphans to help themselves

Cue: One major impact of AIDS and HIV on farming communities has been a devastating loss of manpower, both from those who fall sick, and from those adults and children who have to care for them. However, as well as this loss of manpower, AIDS is also killing off knowledge and skills. Children who lose one or both parents to AIDS are often forced to leave school in order to work or beg for money, and as well as losing their chance of formal education, may also get no informal training in agriculture or other life skills. There is now a real worry that a very large number of the next generation of Africa?s farmers will not have the knowledge to grow the crops that African countries depend on. Clearly something has do be done to address this situation, whether by governments or local groups. Help to Self-Help, based in Arusha, Tanzania, is one such local organisation that is doing just that. Working with under-privileged children and orphans, the staff of Help to Self-Help teach skills that will enable the children to earn money and grow food. Lazarus Laiser recently visited a school set up by the organisation, and spoke to Method Lyaruu, one of the education project advisors. IN: ?We decided to start a school ?? OUT: ??from these two villages.? DUR?N 4?40? BACK ANNOUNCEMENT: Method Lyaruu ending that report from Arusha, Tanzania. Transcript Lyaruu We decided to start a school which will take girls, under-privileged girls so that they can learn some skills in order to run their lives. As you have heard that our name is ?Help to Self-Help Project? means that we help them a bit so that they can help themselves. We used to take those who have got no fathers, no father, no mother, maybe they have died from HIV, maybe thrown away in the street and then they have grown up, they don?t have anywhere to get help and then we are dealing with them. But also we are dealing with the other people outside Arusha municipality. In some few villages we are giving them some assistance in agriculture in order to help themselves in their lives in the families. Laiser In agricultural area how do you help these students or these youth? Lyaruu Ok here, a part of these skills they are getting, we have got a garden here. We are teaching them how to take care of the garden especially to these vegetables so that maybe sometimes if they have got time from their skills then they can involve themselves to their area where they can get maybe vitamins and other things. But mostly we are doing this in order to have more than two things; they can do their skills and then in their part-time they can do gardening so that they can help their families. Laiser Method, would you allow me to visit the garden? Lyaruu Oh yes definitely it?s allowed, you can go and see it. Laiser Method now I can see a very, very good garden here. Who is responsible in this garden? Lyaruu We have got here Mama Makundi, she?s here. Makundi I?m Mama Makundi, I?m teaching the girls how to plant a garden. So we have a garden here in our school. We have planted different kinds of vegetables and also herbs. We have planted herbs also which they can use in cooking, so here they learn about herbs and vegetables to help them in their own lives. They can employ themselves through gardening. Laiser Do you do also in villages? Makundi Yes they have to do the same in their home lives. So I try to make follow up if they are doing the same as we taught them or not. So some of them have already started their own garden. Laiser Mr Method while we are standing on this garden I would like also to ask you about now what you are doing in the villages? Lyaruu Ok we?ve got three villages at the start. In Likamba we have got these cover crops. We encourage them to put cover crops because there at Likamba they have got serious soil erosion. Then we have got Manyire in this Arumeru district also. We have got horticultural to nursery school kids. It is very interesting that we are teaching nursery school kids how to keep vegetables. And these kids are from 4 years to 6 years. We give to each a piece of garden and then we plant something there and we teach how to take care. Laiser Can a 4 year old child learn how to take care of his own garden? Lyaruu Yes, yes, yes according to what we have found in our research, she can or he can, watering the garden, he can make some weeding in the garden. Apart from this we have been helping them for more than 10 years for seeds, the whole village, these two villages. Laiser You provide the seeds? Lyaruu We provide the seeds to them. But this year we?ve decided to stop on giving them seeds always. What we have done, we have started a project which can help them to produce their own seeds. So we have given them foundation seeds so that they can grow and produce seeds themselves, so that they will stop coming and getting help always because our project is Help to Self-Help. You are to be helped, then you can help yourself. That is what we are doing. Now this year we have started this and we have seen a fruit because we are expecting to harvest more than 2000 kilograms of seeds from these two villages. End of track.The NGO Help to Self Help is assisting under-privileged children, orphans and rural communities to learn productive skills and achieve better food production. This interview features two staff from the organisation based in Arusha, Tanzani