The University of Namibia’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) and community engagement programme, UNAM Cares with financial support from the Capacitating One Health in Eastern and Southern Africa (COHESA), joined efforts with Crowded House Church to implement a Sustainable One Health Garden in Dordabis (SOHGARD). The SOHGARD aims to produce food and feed (onions, spinach, sweet corn, beetroot, carrots, lettuce, beans, green peppers, chili, tomatoes, pumpkins, lucerne, sunflower, etc.) for human and animal consumption. This collective partnership is a profound process of community engagement, needs assessments, communication, and capacitating One Health. SOHGARD is supervised and managed by the leadership of Crowded House Church. UNAM Cares provides technical assistance in food and feed production, food safety and, security, capacitating One Health for rural families in their social context under the expertise of One Health pracademics (Prof Rachel Freeman, Head of UNAM Cares in the Office of the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Lydia Horn, Coordinator of the Zero-Emission Research Initiative (ZERI) in the Multidisciplinary Research Centre for Research), Dr Yvonne Hemberger (Head, Senior Lecturer: Vet Public Health & HOD of Para-clinical Studies), and Ms. Isabella Ueitele, Senior Technologist (ZERI).
UNAM Cares works with vulnerable, rural, and indigenous minority populations whose One Health and well-being are hampered by economic, social, and environmental determinants. The societal impact by UNAM Cares in close collaboration with Crowded House Church with the financial support of COHESA seeks to capacitate communities with knowledge in One Health, train families in Sustainable One Health Gardening (SOHG) skills towards food and feed production and security, aiming at building production systems that operate in an agroecological viable, environmentally correct, socially fair, and culturally diverse and sensitive way.
The programme employs a One Health approach, which takes place in three dimensions, promoting human health and well-being, animal health and welfare, plant and environmental health encouraging nutritional agricultural production, water resource management, and conservation of properties, aiming at pesticides free food production, and understanding the social reality of families. It is valuing cultural manifestations and traditions aiming to strengthen the social cohesion of communities and encourage cooperation between families, communities, and societies. The SOHGARD initiative is currently increasing nutritional food and feed production and security for families, encouraging families to cascade the initiative to manage small-scale backyard vegetable gardens for family consumption, and generate an income for self-sustainability. The community members have optimized the knowledge and skills obtained through technical assistance and capacity-building training in food and feed production.
Thirty (30) families (between five to eight members per household in the Dordabis constituency) are currently benefitting from daily fresh produce from the Sustainable One Health Garden in Dordabis (SOHGARD), seeking to create short marketing circuits for self-income generation, and collective group work towards improving sustainable livelihoods.
As a result of this methodology, UNAM Cares successfully conducted a five-day sustainable gardening skills training and One Health capacity-building training for 19 One Health Champions in Dordabis. The said training had a positive impact on the human, animal and, environmental health of the Dordabis community in food and feed production, food safety and, security towards improving livelihoods in Dordabis.
The gardening skills training and capacitating One Health, encouraged the agricultural production of food and feed without the use of chemical pesticides, and action for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, soil, and water, which directly and indirectly contribute to healthier eating habits for families and to the health of all beings and the environment.
The SOHGARD families capitalized on the knowledge and skills gained from the One Health training on food production, disease prevention and, proper handling of animals’ health and ensuring animal welfare. UNAM Cares and COHESA are pleased about the outcome of our collective efforts with Crowded House Church in Dordabis which is facilitated from a One Health perspective as it seeks to integrate human, animal, plant and, environmental health.
The integrated One Health approach contributed to increasing knowledge and skills, transformed practices in food and feed production, family autonomy, and bringing economic viability. UNAM Cares and COHESA in close collaboration with Crowded House Church comments the SOHGARD One Health Champions for their spirit of teamwork, dedication and commitment in the successful implementation of the project. The tripartite (UNAM Cares, COHESA and Crowded House) aspires to document and share the SOHGARD project as a Best-Case sample on the transformative power of collective efforts towards food and feed production among rural communities. UNAM Cares is profoundly grateful for the land, water, leadership and supervisory support provided to the SOHGARD One Health Champions by Crowded House Church. Our immense gratitude goes to COHESA international for the financial support provided for the successful implementation of the SOHGARD project in Dordabis. We are looking to foster more societal impactful partnerships with organizations who wish to financially support UNAM Cares in the implementation of such projects in any community.
For more information contact: Prof Rachel Freeman, Head of UNAM Cares
Office of the Vice Chancellor, Email: rfreeman@unam.na
