Empowerment Through Gardening

The women of Mirik Lamreudup village are not only winning awards for their organic agriculture, but sharing their newfound success with other women in the area. Most of them are survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami. All of them have made great strides in the last three years.

"We can now provide our families' daily need of vegetables without buying them. And they are healthier than regular vegetables because they are organic," said Laila Misra, one of 26 female farmers in the village gardening cooperative, located in an area of Indonesia's Aceh Province that was hard-hit by the tsunami. Her group received vegetable seeds and farming tools from Mercy Corps to start home gardening on community land.

But, according to Laila, the most important thing the women received was the knowledge to make agriculture work for them and their families.

Mercy Corps is working with Green Hand — a local organization with extensive agricultural expertise in Aceh — to train villagers in organic gardening methods. Laila and her team members, who are mostly housewives, received a seven-week training from Green Hand. After two weeks of classroom learning about organic cultivation, they spent five weeks practicing organic methods on a garden plot that was formerly the village waste disposal site.

The program also aims to empower the women so that they can generate additional household income from empty land. Before this program, much of the village's land was not productive. Organic gardening systems are helping to regenerate the land — and raise the fortunes of village families.

Today, what was once a dump is covered with healthy tomatoes and chillies. The site has numerous pits for decaying plant material and kitchen waste to produce compost, as well as small nurseries filled with new seedling growth.

Mercy Corps has been here throughout the process to encourage the group's activities, as well as to answer questions and provide technical support. We were on hand when, in May 2007, Laila and her friends manage produced their first harvest of organic vegetables and compost. They sold the products to local villagers — and then people from other villages came to buy their products. In all, they produced and sold 1,100 pounds of organic fertilizer that is ready to use in other area gardens.

The group's organic vegetables, including tomatoes and chili peppers, recently won prizes as the best exhibit and village group at a recent district-wide agriculture show.. "We were so happy because our stall was the most visited one; so many people were interested in our products and they asked a lot of questions regarding organic vegetables and on how we produce them," said Laila. "We are now thinking to expand our business in home gardening, particularly in the mass production of organic fertiliser."

This group's success has also sparked further achievements. Their land has been chosen as a pilot garden that can be used as a research area for organic home gardening. Many people from surrounding villages — as well as local organizations from around Aceh Province — are coming to the site to learn how to plant organic vegetables and produce organic fertilizer. Some have even used the plot as a training site, bringing the ladies of Mirik Lamreudup full circle by allowing them to pass on their own expertise.

"We are really benefiting from this project. Before this project, I did not know anything about organic gardening at all because my background has nothing to do with agriculture. I went to school of education," Laila explained. "I even did not know what organic vegetables and the advantages are. Now I am helping teach others how to succeed.

"We were so proud and also nervous because we had never been trainers before — and we did not know how to begin. But with the knowledge and experience from Mercy Corps, we have managed to prepare the materials for the training and now we can share our knowledge and skills of organic home garden to women in our sub-district."

If there's anything better than organic home-grown tomatoes, it's passing on the gift of how to grow them.