Increasing food security through training, tools, and water accessibility
Roll a Hippo Foundation
Nelly Nkosi, a long-time community member and local leader in Roosboom village, South Africa, was desperate to help rebuild her community. Although Roosboom was once a prosperous agricultural village, the erosion of educational institutions, forced removal of residents, and dispossession of livestock and land as a result of corrupt political intervention has had lasting impacts on the community. Additionally, Nelly’s village, along with many others in the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa, faced challenges due to COVID-19, rising food prices, and substantial flooding. Nelly witnessed the effects of these hardships on her community and has been a large part of efforts to rebuild. After decades of immensely challenging conditions, she was eager to help her community recover.
An essential aspect of rebuilding community is food and water security. The burden of water collection falls disproportionately on women and children, who undertake the exhausting and time-consuming task of hauling multiple buckets of water daily. This work is laborious and eats up time that might otherwise be dedicated to women’s economic and educational activities.
The Roll a Hippo Foundation, in collaboration with FIT, introduced an innovative solution focused on food security, nutrition, and water collection, with an emphasis on empowering women in the region. The innovation offered food security training courses for local community members, which included basic gardening techniques, soil and resource management, as well as nutritional information. The training was interactive and engaging, with six demonstration gardens erected at various locations in order to demonstrate new gardening skills and techniques. Another essential aspect of the innovation was the provision of hippo water rollers - tools that resemble re-engineered wheelbarrows designed to transport water easily and efficiently. This tool is innovatively designed to allow the weight of the water to rest inside the wheel, allowing women and children to move more water in less time (a full hippo roller holds a maximum of 90 litres - enough water to meet the daily needs of a family of seven). These rollers were included alongside other essential gardening tools in a Survival Garden Kit distributed to community members.
Empowering women is crucial for alleviating poverty and increasing community resilience. With fewer trips to collect water, women in rural villages were able to spend more time on productive educational and economic activities resulting in increased food security. The gardening courses offered through the innovation also helped ensure that women had the tools necessary to successfully reinstate the agricultural vitality of the community. Ample accessible water is a necessary condition for growing healthy vegetable gardens and helps open doors to additional benefits such as better health and hygiene, enhanced nutrition, and economic and educational opportunities.
The enthusiasm of community members and especially women in villages where the innovation took place was overwhelming. The strong focus on community rather than individual intervention meant that community leaders, volunteers, and neighbors came together in support of the village. Additionally, the innovation highlighted the effectiveness of hippo rollers. Nearly 90% of those who participated either agreed or strongly agreed that the hippo roller changed their life for the better, and the overwhelming sentiment was a desire to have them in the communities.
Nelly enthusiastically participated in the innovation before taking on the role of Co-Facilitator and provided organizers with additional support for training and implementation. She was immensely inspired by the work and proceeded to organize community-led projects and fundraising efforts to acquire 200 more hippo rollers. The Food Security Training Program was a beacon of light for Nelly and offered her the opportunity to help restore her community through agriculture, food security, and community volunteerism.
“I am asking for just 10 minutes to address the group. I have been farming for 6 years but I have learnt so much so today I am just going to summarise what we have done in the past two months and how this has changed my life and how I will do things. I feel so empowered. I want to continue to change my community.”
– Nelly Nkosi, Participant
