Kakuuto Development Initiative (KADI) is not just an education organization. It’s not just a farmer’s cooperative. It’s not just an advocate for health and wellbeing in the community. KADI in rural Uganda, does all three, plus so much more! Like so many of SIA grassroots grant partners, KADI is a true community development organization.
Food security is one of KADI’s top priorities. They are coaching people to start kitchen gardens, which grow food for the family, but also are dynamic family spaces. Lubowa Joseph, one of the KADI team describes them this way:
"The backyard garden can be defined as a farming system which combines different physical, social and economic functions on the area of land around the family home. Within the typical home garden are social areas for meetings, children's play area and gardens for display; economic areas for growing food, medicinal plants and trees and for raising animals; physical areas for storage, living, washing and waste disposal. It is a place for people to live in and it also produces a variety of foods and other things for both home consumption and income."
KADI women in a kitchen backyard garden
One of KADI’s collective projects is a community soybean farm (pictured right). Now is the growing season, and KADI is hiring community members to help with hoeing and weeding the five-acres of farmland. “We hope that at the end of the season, all harvests will be pulled together for sale as one union so that there is better bargain ground for better prices,” says Joseph in his latest report to SIA. Some of the KADI team attended a farming exposition last year and they are training others in the techniques they learned.
Kato Male is one of the people who helped with the farming last month. He used to work in Kampala as a car washer but came home to Kakuuto village after he lost his job as a result of the pandemic. Most Ugandans who live in the cities also have extended family in the rural areas.
Kato used income from digging at the KADI farm to open a local chapati (flatbread) stall. Chapati is a staple of Ugandan meals, and also a favorite snack! When SIA African Advisory Board Member, Naomi Ayot, went to visit KADI last month, she stopped at Kato’s shop to hear his story.
Part of KADI’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been to install a “tippy tap” in the marketplace. The “tippy tab” is a water jug with a string attached to a stick. When you step on the stick it tips the jug on it’s side so that the water pours out like a faucet - no need for hands!
At the end of Naomi’s meeting with KADI, she visited one of the elderly women who received food assistance from KADI and SIA last month. Naomi gave Mudo (profiled in the latest SIA newsletter) a pair of shoes and some food as a way of Sharing the Gift. Naomi says, “I shall always share my gift and extend my love in the poor rural community as my honour to Del Anderson's vision and to honor Barbara Deal, especially when I am able to reach out to older women without children.”
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