Kitchen Gardening provides balanced diet for SEVAI- SHG families

Model kitchen garden in SEVAI Marutham cottage

“Kitchen Gardening provides balanced diet for SEVAI- SHG families” mentioned by T.Vanitha, Coordinator of Women Self Help Groups promoted by SEVAI, a Trichy based NGO for the family members of women self help groups in rural areas of Trichirappalli District, while addressing the SEVAI promoted Self Help Group Animators in Trichirappalli on 24^th November. She further added that, “Vegetables occupy an important place in our daily life as Vegetables are the only source to increase not only the nutritive values of foods but also its palatability, there arouse a need to promote the target villagers of SEVAI SHGs to produce their own vegetable requirements in their backyards using the available fresh water as well as the kitchen and wastewater. This process is not only facilitate prevention of stagnation unused water, but it is useful for successful production of own requirement of vegetables. It is established kitchen garden units at Allur and Amoor cluster”.  Malathy,the field coordinator of SEAI mentioned that there is also model kitchen gardening has been established at an area of 10000 sq.ft for the benefit of the target villagers to learn and practice and also feed around 50 Children with Special Needs (CWSN) ,this model Kitchen Garden caters their health and nutrition intake needs. She added, “There are limited choices for the selection of sites for kitchen gardens by women Self Help groups, and the adequate choice is usually the backyard of the house.  This is convenient as the members of the family can give a constant care to the vegetables during leisure and the wastewater from the bathrooms and kitchen is easily be diverted to the vegetable beds. With succession cropping and intercropping, 600sq.ft of land is adequate to supply vegetables for an average family of four to five persons. Nisa, a cluster coordinator of SEVAI said, “SHG Women feed their families first and then sell surplus garden foods. In certain contexts income generation may become the primary objective of the kitchen garden as kitchen Gardening gives dual benefits of food and income generation, provide fodder for household and marketing of garden produce is often the only source of independent income for women”. Govin