Gardens for Health International

To tackle the root causes of malnutrition, we equip families with seeds, skills, and knowledge to create vegetable gardens, prepare balanced meals, and keep children healthy. Transformative impact is possible by investing in the nutrition of mothers and young children, since well-nourished children get sick less often, perform better in school, and are more likely to escape poverty.

There are three types of trainings we deliver in our programs: agriculture, nutrition, and health. Our agriculture trainings help families with malnourished children plant home gardens full of diverse vegetables so they will have a lasting source of nutritious food. We provide seeds and hands-on trainings in skills like creating compost, preventing soil erosion, and other techniques to maximize crop yields using resources available to the poorest of the poor.

Our nutrition trainings teach parents essential knowledge like the benefits of a healthy diet, what makes a balanced meal, and the importance of hand washing. Our innovative One Pot One Hour lesson demonstrates how to cook a healthy meal with limited time and resources so that every mother can provide her children with the nutrients they need to thrive.

Our health trainings work to break the cycle of illness and malnutrition by addressing every factor that leads to malnutrition. In engaging trainings, full of song and dance, we educate mothers to identify symptoms of common illnesses, promote family planning, and discuss difficult subjects like traditional medicine and gender-based violence.

Gardens for Health International is committed to rigorous monitoring and evaluation of our programs. We conduct baseline surveys of program participants and then conduct follow up surveys at graduation, and one year and two years later. We use standard health and nutrition indicators recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). When possible, we compare results to national data. In addition, we assess knowledge retention and behavior change. Key indicators include: nutritional status of children, dietary diversity of families, nutrition and health knowledge scores and prenatal care services utilization

Our longest-running program is our Child Nutrition Program in which we enroll mothers with malnourished children and then train them on agriculture, health and nutrition topics. In FY 2018, the average knowledge score for agriculture topics improved from 25.1% at baseline to 73.8%, for health topics it improved from 31.4% to 71.2%, and for nutrition topics it improved from 44.3% to 95.2%. The average number of vegetable varieties grown at our participants’ households went from 2.2 at baseline to 8.1 vegetable varieties at graduation. Additionally, the percent of children meeting minimum dietary diversity, as defined by the WHO, improved from just 0.4% at baseline to 62.8% upon graduation.
Our Maternal Health Program is focused on improving the nutrition of pregnant women and encouraging healthy behaviors. In FY 2018, the percent of women enrolled in our Maternal Health Program meeting minimum dietary diversity rose from 19.8% at baseline to 45.7% upon graduation. 100% of mothers enrolled in our Maternal Health Program attended a prenatal care check up at their local clinic before graduating, and 77% reported that they had skin-to-skin contact with their newborn immediately after birth.

GHI was founded in 2007 by Julie Carney, Emma Clippinger, and Dr. Emily Morell, who shared the belief that agriculture should play a critical role in addressing large-scale public health challenges. In 2010, GHI began partnering with government health centers to deliver agriculture, nutrition, and health trainings in order to end Rwanda’s high rates of child malnutrition. Since then, GHI has scaled to 19 health centers throughout Rwanda, served thousands of families, guided local, district, and national nutrition policy, and expanded its programming through innovations and partnerships. In 2016, GHI launched the Maternal Health Program that works with pregnant women to prevent child malnutrition before it begins. In 2018, Solomon Makuza was promoted to the organization’s highest position, Executive Director, marking a new chapter for GHI dedicated to local leadership.
Because GHI believes that the best way to implement sustainable solutions is by strengthening existing health systems, we deliver our program in partnership with government-run health centers. Over the last five years, we have developed a strong partnership with Musanze District, a mountainous region in the north of Rwanda with high levels of child malnutrition. We operate in all 15 of the district’s health centers, serve as a key partner to the government in crafting nutrition policy, and invest in the capacity of local community health workers. We recently commenced a planning process that will guide an ambitious endeavor to fully integrate our model into Musanze’s public health system. This strategy and plan must recognize local policy priorities and infrastructure while implementing graduated changes that allow us to closely monitor challenges and successes. We believe we can integrate our model into the district within the next five years.