Family Garden Kit ($40)

The fresh, colorful fruits and vegetables that we take for granted are often nowhere to be found in the world's poorest areas. For families that live in these places, this scarcity goes far beyond inconvenience — it looms as a constant threat to family health.

Why Help Is Needed

Poor nutrition, including a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, keeps children from developing at a healthy pace — and puts them at risk for preventable diseases. Yet fresh produce is expensive and difficult to come by in impoverished villages around the world. Many families are forced to eat fewer meals or simply go hungry as a result.

Mercy Corps In Action

Mercy Corps’ agricultural programs provide training, seeds and farming tools to help families set up and maintain gardens. By growing their own fresh and healthy food, families can improve their diets, stave off malnutrition and prevent disease. Our programs ensure their children get the vital ingredients they need to thrive.

Marleny's Story

Marleny Yara is among the survivors of Colombia's ongoing violence, and among the three million displaced from their homes. She moved to the capital, Bogotá, six years ago from a small town where her family grew sugarcane and raised honeybees.

"We're from the countryside, and we always grew things," she said. "But there's no space here."

Last year, however, Marleny found space to grow. Mercy Corps and its local partner, Minuto de Dios, erected six greenhouses and launched a program to help vulnerable and displaced families cultivate land in the city. With two dozen of her neighbors, Marleny tends a greenhouse that is abundant with tomato, broccoli, green peas, strawberries, chard, and other crops. "In seven months, I've learned all of this," she says, beaming and gesturing to the beds of vegetables beside her. "How to prepare the soil, how to sow the seeds, how to use natural fertilizers, and how to harvest."

Every 15 days, she and the other participants take home a portion of the greenhouse harvest. That's meant that for the last seven months Marleny hasn't had to buy vegetables for herself or her sons, only one of whom is employed. In addition, each participant is getting somewhere around 400,000 pesos, or $180, to use towards an individual or cooperative business. Despite all she's lost, her spirits are high. "All of us," she says, "have to continue forward."

Family Garden Kit ($40)
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Purchase of a Mercy Kit is a symbolic gift that supports Mercy Corps' worldwide programs to help children and families in need. The Breastfeeding Kit, Climate Change Kit, Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit, Cricket Farm Kit, Send an Orphan to School Kit, Plant a Tree Kit, Play to Heal Kit and Uganda Farm Kit supports those specific project funds. Proceeds from the sale of other Mercy Kits will be used where most needed.