As we begin a new month, we continue implementation of our project in Yumbe District (Bidi Bidi settlement), in partnership with Foundation S, focused on strengthening the capacity of refugee women and IDPs through smart and sustainable agriculture.
Yumbe hosts one of the largest refugee populations in East Africa. For many households, small-scale farming is the primary source of food and income. However, climate variability has made traditional open-field farming increasingly unreliable. Rainfall patterns have become unpredictable, dry spells are longer, and crop failure has become more frequent.
In this context, adaptation cannot remain theoretical.
Our intervention introduces protected greenhouse farming systems combined with hands-on agronomic training, group organization, and market linkage support.
Each greenhouse of this scale:
• Directly engages 25–40 refugee and host community households per production cycle
• Supplies fresh vegetables to over 100 households annually
• Increases productivity by 3–5 times compared to open-field cultivation
• Reduces water use by approximately 60% through drip irrigation
• Enables year-round production, stabilizing household income
But the structure alone is not the solution.
We work with organized women-led groups. We build technical capacity in seed selection, spacing, pest management, irrigation management, and post-harvest handling. We support collective marketing approaches to ensure produce is sold at fair value rather than distress prices.
The objective is clear: move households from climate-vulnerable subsistence farming toward structured, climate-adaptive livelihood systems.
In displacement settings, sustainable agriculture must do three things at once:
1.Strengthen food security
2.Generate predictable income
3.Withstand climate shocks
This is what we are building in Yumbe — deliberately, practically, and in partnership.
We remain open to partnerships that want to invest in scalable, evidence-driven climate adaptation models in refugee-hosting districts.
#BetterLifeInternational #FoundationS #ClimateAdaptation #RefugeeLivelihoods #FoodSecurity #Yumbe