Training of Trainers in Central Kenya
Veggies4Planet&People (V4P&P) is an exciting initiative funded by the IKEA Foundation, coordinated by WorldVeg and implemented by SNV, WorldVeg and local partners in Kenya and Ethiopia.
One of its objectives is to build capacity for regenerative agricultural technologies for the cultivation of traditional African vegetables that have a high market demand in the cities of Nairobi, Kisumu and Addis Ababa.
For this purpose, 130 Vegetable Business Networks (VBNs) have been selected and established, and every VBN is being supported by a business coach. The business coaches have been selected from and by the communities; they are mostly young women and men who have an appetite for business, exciting innovative horticultural technologies, who are concerned about people’s and planet’s health, and who like to build the farming community around them.
V4P&P supports them by giving them a solid training on regenerative agricultural practices and business skills. As the project entered in its second year, a new batch of coaches from Kiambu, Muranga, Machakos, Kisumu, Vihiga and Kakamega Counties were trained early 2022 to create a solid foundation for their skills.
The 100 new coaches attended three consecutive training courses lasting a week each. At the end of each week, the coaches were expected to return to their villages and start training other VBN members.
The training courses in Bukura and Thika were very dynamic indeed. One of the trainers, Martin Barare from WorldVeg, made the coaches examine the soil health of vegetables plots, explaining: ‘Organic matter content is crucial to the health of the soil; with the indicators provided in this manual each of you can rate soil health on a scale from 1 to 10’.
After the practical exercise, they learned on how to improve the soils in terms of nitrogen content, organic matter, water holding capacity and other indicators. Leah Mwaura from SNV, WorldVeg partner in the V4P&P project, trained the coaches on business skills, or what she called ‘soft skills’; these included group dynamics, communications skills and leadership. After day 1, participants commented that these sessions will not only help them in their work to support VBNs, but also in many other aspects of their daily lives.
