Saharawi children have never known a life of freedom.
For more than three decades the Saharawi people have been forced to live as refugees in barren camps in Algeria’s harsh Sahara desert. Without a community to call their own, the Saharawi are completely dependent on food to be delivered to their camps by truck.
Nourishment for them has meant a simple refugee diet of rice and beans, and occassionally meat. Imagine how exciting it is for families to now be able to grow vegetable gardens and fresh herbs in the desert sands surrounding their tent homes.
A Saharawi woman tends to her new vegetable garden.
Your participation in the Reaching Farther Auction will help fund the technology that will provide drip irrigation supplies and training, a water container for each family, and and seeds for growing carrots, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, zucchini, eggplant and beets.
A soil conditioner, TerraCottem, allows plants to grow and thrive with very minimal water usage. Along with TerraCottem, greenhouses, and drip irrigation systems, Saharawi families are able to grow these healthy and nutritious foods year round.
Terracottem® was developed by scientists to combat desertification in U. N. and other humanitarian projects in Africa.
This project had originally been funded by UNICEF until about a year ago, when money for the program was pulled. But the proceeds from the Reaching Farther Auction will help to keep this project going.
For a people who are historically nomadic, always moving with their herds to find pasture and never staying in one place long enough to even imagine planting a garden, this is a very new concept. But those who have tried this new experiment are delighted to eat and share the vegetables (and sometimes even flowers) with their families and neighbors. This skill will be something they can take with them wherever they go….hopefully back to their homeland someday.
