Think Creative - Issue 6

Dispatches

updates from around our world

ACS-PROSASUR provides technical assistance to smallholder farmers to help them grow new crops and implement more productive farming practices.

Honduras // Dry Corridor Alliance Healthy homes and harvests

The yuca plants are ready to harvest in José Belberto Varela’s small garden outside his home in the San José community in southern Honduras. It’s a simple but important milestone for Varela’s family of six and just one of many changes they’re seeing this season. Nestled in Honduras’ Dry Corridor, a region known for severe droughts and resulting food insecurity, the family has struggled to access clean water and grow crops. And like many in this region where more than 90 percent of people live below the poverty line, the Varelas’ home lacked some of the basic amenities needed to keep their four children healthy. But that was before the family started growing new crops for consumption and sale, raising chickens for eggs and meat, and benefiting from household improvements. In short, it

was before the Varelas began participating in the ACS-PROSASUR project, which works in 12 municipalities in the southern departments of Choluteca and El Paraíso to improve livelihoods and build resilience for 6,000 poor and extreme poor families. “I feel grateful because thank God I now have better conditions for my children. I never imagined that one day I would get help, that I would benefit from ACS-PROSASUR and that one day my house would change completely,” says Varela. The project has two main components: Food Production and Income Generation to boost resilience for smallholder farmers, and Nutrition Education and Household Hygiene to combat chronic malnutrition in children under 2 and in pregnant women. The Varelas are one of 1,000 families in the region

benefiting from both. ACS-PROSASUR, part of the Dry Corridor Alliance, is implemented by Creative in partnership with the Honduras Strategic Investment Office (INVEST-H) and receives funding from the World Bank through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. A healthy, resilient household Inside their home, the Varela family received an eco-filter for water, a clean stove, a latrine, and a cement floor to replace their dirt one. By drinking purified water, breathing cleaner air when they cook, using the updated latrine, and no longer sitting and walking on dirt, the family is far less vulnerable to stomach diseases and diarrhea, which are major causes of childhood malnutrition.

Photo by Skip Brown

8 | Think Creative | Fall 2019