Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Organization
(Malawi)
Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC) Organization
Founded in 2000, SFHC has evolved into a farmer-led non-profit organisation that aims to increase the amount of locally grown nutritious food, promote environmentally friendly farming practices, and develop healthy communities.
The Eurofins Foundation supports SFHC's project to improve nutrition, gender equality, and wellbeing for 500 food-insecure farming households in Malawi. This participatory project responds to the intersecting challenges of food insecurity, poor health and nutrition, and poor soil health, exacerbated by climate change and underlying gender inequalities.
In 2020/ 2021, Eurofins Foundation's funding allowed SFHC to host agroecology, gender equity, and nutrition training with over 500 farmers from across seven village areas and distribute seeds to over 500 new farmers. These trainings gave farmers the necessary knowledge to improve their soil fertility, boost production, and increase their access to nutritionally dense foods.
By including gender training as part of their educational package, SFHC also encouraged social justice within farming communities, by following a curricula that challenge rigid gender roles. The funding helped disseminate more information to stakeholders such as policymakers, funders, researchers, and other groups whose continued support serves SFHC's mission. Results have demonstrated that this method helps redistribute household labour, incorporate men into caregiving roles, and support equitable decision-making power in households.
As a result, farmers reported widespread legume planting, culinary lessons, and implementation of agroecological training, focusing on the development of women and young people.
Since 2021 / 2022, the Eurofins Foundation further supports SFHC and Malawian farmers in achieving cooperative independence.
The funding provided by the foundation allowed SFHC to host agroecology, gender equity, and nutrition trainings to farmers from around the catchment area. They also distributed seeds as their overall objective is to help farmers improve their food security and nutrition while improving environmental indicators such as soil quality and biodiversity. These trainings allowed SFHC to serve over 700 new farmers with information that will empower them to improve their soil fertility, boost production, and have more access to nutritionally dense foods. By including gender trainings as part of the educational package, SFHC also encouraged social justice within farming communities. The funding has helped disseminate more information to different stakeholders such as policy makers, funders, researchers, and other groups whose continued support serves SFHC’s mission.
This is a testimony from Anita Chitaya a 49 year old farmer from Bwabwa:
« I have always attended agroecology trainings which included a number of good practices such as compost manure making, soil and water conservation, double –up legume intercropping, crop residue incorporation and agroforestry.
I have been practicing these methods in my farm and they have helped me improve my soils which were very degraded, and nowadays I harvest food to feed my family. In the first year, I just had the knowledge on how to produce food but later on I was also involved in recipe demonstrations which were organised by SFHC and I got involved with the preparation of different recipes from local available crops because my children were suffering from severe malnutrition.
Since then, we have been drinking soya milk and making soya meat and soya African cake, and I have also been making bean sausages.
The soya milk really improved the situation of my malnourished child, because as soon as he started taking the milk, he started gaining weight. In short, I can say that was the beginning of our development in our family. We now know what to plant and how to utilise them. We no longer have to sell all of our groundnuts and soya beans because the legumes have been helpful in improving the nutrition status of my children. »
In 2023/2025, the Eurofins Foundation renews its support to SFHC.
This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
