At Eddys Kitchen Initiative, through our feeding program that hopes to alleviate hunger in school-going children, we recently partnered with M-shamba to share our vision statement that seeks to see the children and youth of our communities graduate from school, and become self-sustainable, healthy adults who are literate and economically stable.
We caught up with Calvince Okello, Founder, and C.E.O of M-Shamba, an innovative agribusiness that uses a mobile platform to provide pivotal information to farmers, who are their target beneficiaries, on production, marketing, and distribution of their produce.
“Agriculture is the backbone of our economy, as it contributes to approximately 33% of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP). Therefore M-Shamba contributes to an improved system of food security and sustainable food production. “He said, explaining his choice of Agribusiness to other prospective businesses.
“Most farmers, have produce but don’t know how to bring it to the market, for that reason, we try to narrow that niche by supporting farmers through this interactive initiative", he added.
As a young boy who schooled in Kisumu, he fathoms the holistic impact of attending school on an empty stomach. Therefore through this partnership under E.K. Initiative, he hopes to see more students attend school.
Students tend to fall behind in school when they are starved and malnourished as it affects their cognitive learning. When they are fed with proper and enough meals, their nutrition is improved, performance in education gradually takes a positive shift through their transitions in life and helps open doors to their future His achievement is to see the school and community at large being able to put the capacity instilled in them into action whereby they may take care of their kitchen gardens for sustainability purposes at the end of the feeding program to take the edge off their hunger. He wishes many potential partners and stakeholders can join hands to support such initiatives as well as the County government can be drafted to have such policies for children.
“My vision is to see hunger and poverty kicked out. Farmers can raise their standards of living by using their farms to generate income and transform agricultural farming into thriving agribusiness." Calvin Okello articulated.