SoroptiVoiceBLOG

Throughout December, we are delighted to welcome SI leadership to the SoroptiVoice blog spot! This week, SIE President Kathy explains why she selected water and food as the theme for her presidency, and shares the phenomenon of 'guerilla gardening'... coming to an urban waste land near you! Next Friday, to mark Human Rights Day and her December 10th Appeal, SI President Alice will be writing for us, followed by SIGBI President Maureen (16th), SIA President Pat (23rd) and SISWP President Yvonne (30th).

Soroptimist International of Europe could not be more up-to-date with our new two-year-theme, “Water and Food”. Since I started to research the subject of “Water and Food” in Summer 2009, I have learned hundreds of thrilling things which fill six fat files in my study. Let me share with you one example -  Guerilla Gardening!

Have you ever heard of Princess Gardens, an urban farming pilot project, started in the countryside? No  - just the opposite, in fact! It was started in the capital of Germany, at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland of 6000 sqm for over half a century. Along with friends, supporters, activists and neighbours, the group, led by Robert Shaw and Marco Clausen, cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots, planted in boxes or baskets and reaped the first fruits of their labours.

And Guerilla Gardening? It is the larger form which exists worldwide (for more information, visit www.guerrillagardening.org). The idea is to grow plants or vegetables on a empty pieces of land; especially that which is in bad condition because it has been neglected by the authorities; very often in a city. Guerilla Gardeners plant very often during the night and change an ugly space into a plot of flowers or vegetables. (Sugested reading: Richard Reynolds “On Guerilla Gardening”, A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries, London 2008, also click here to see what Guerilla Gardeners have been doing at the climate change talks in South Africa).

Where are Soroptimists in these projects? Wait, we will come! I can tell you already of a wonderful project which is being subsidised with the profits from sales of the 2012 SIE calendar, featuring the lively pictures created by the youth of Boma Rescue Centre, Korogocho slum, Nairobi, Kenya. The money will be put towards funding a fish pond looked after by girls of Embakasy Girls’ Secondary School in Nairobi. This project is particularly innovative as many people in African countries desperately need sources of protein other than meat. Another project of Embakasy Girls’ Secondary School is a school garden which the girls (aged 14 to 20) manage. The Soroptimist Club of Millimani in Nairobi has established a competition between the Girls’ School and the (mixed-sex) Peter Kubukosya School. The awards will be for the most creative, best kept garden, and the one which has produced the most vegetables.

Besides the wonderful idea of gardening in whatever space available, however tiny or big it might be, there is another supremely important issue: raising awareness of the scandalous 50% of food wastage estimated in the Global North.

This is something Soroptimists can work against, wherever they are. In developing countries it is about passing on the knowledge of how to conserve food in order to be able to either use it or sell it at the appropriate time. In industrialised countries it is encouraging the habit of not buying too much at a time, of freezing small portions and of using leftovers in a creative way (like our grandmothers did!), information which can be transferred to people of any age in an appropriate way to avoid their wasting food. The film “Taste the Waste” has already started positive change - Why not show it in your community and club to start a discussion as to how we can react appropriately?

School gardens are an enrichment for each community. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) has published a CD on “Setting up and running a school garden” containing valuable information which all of you can download (www.fao.org). 

Please have a look at the Project Matching section (on our SI/E-website under programmes) where SI/E and SIA offer to share projects with clubs in Africa and Europe and the whole world. Any club can set up a project, describe it in detail, point out its sustainability and ask for help to finance it. With this system more than 200 projects were executed under SIE Past President Mariet’s motto “Soroptimists go for water”.

 We are painfully aware of how important it is to protest against the unjust speculation on agricultural raw materials. Why not invite, on a community basis, your politicians to speak out against this scandalous – and artificially created - shortage of foodstuffs?

If you want to post your idea and seek collaboration, please contact our SI/E Programme Executive Suba Parthiban (siehq@soroptimisteurope.org).

Banks were saved during the financial crisis. Who advocates for human beings without enough food to decently survive? Soroptimists cannot fail to take action in a world in which almost one billion people are suffering from starvation. We have to shake up the stakeholders involved in this scandal.

The world population can be fed if we will only use our imagination and determination to work for that goal. Please join me in our engagement for Water and Food! 

Kathy Kaaf

SIE President