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Protecting the Earth Through Practical Education

on  April 21, 2021

Editor’s Note: This blog is the second in a three-part series for Earth Day 2021, with the theme “Three Days of Climate Action.” The first post focused on youth, and today’s post will focus on education. Read more below!Educators and educational institutions play an important role in preparing students to understand and take action on interdisciplinary topics like environmental protection and climate change. But in Mali, a country where Rise Against Hunger works to improve food security, few people achieve more than elementary education. Women represent 62% of the agricultural workforce in Mali, but only 26% of Malian women are literate (Source: UNESCO). Additionally, Mali is a country facing enormous environmental challenges. 34% of the country is used for agriculture, while the remaining land is primarily arid or desert (Source: USAID).In such a context, how can women and youth gain access to the information and skills necessary to care for the environment and overcome food security challenges? Rise Against Hunger and our partner, Association Malienne d’Eveil au Développement (AMEDD), have answered this question with a few effective techniques.

A demonstration field in Mali where farmers hone their skills.
First, radio programs in local languages are a powerful tool for raising awareness. In every rural village, regardless of access to electricity, small, battery-powered radios can be found. Since the beginning of the Elevating Women and Youth Farmers project in 2019, AMEDD has collaborated with local radio stations to present programming on climate change to all districts where the project is being implemented. With this approach, the project has reached an audience of 33,203 community members over two years.Second, Farmer Field Schools have been established in each project community. At the FFS, one lead farmer, who has received additional training from the project, meets regularly with follower farmers to teach climate-smart agriculture techniques on a demonstration field. Climate-smart agriculture is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organisation as having three objectives:

  1. Sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes
  2. Adapt and build resilience to climate change
  3. Reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.

Third, the group of farmers adopts the CSA techniques they have learned. In the Elevating Women and Youth Farmers project, farmers are reducing soil erosion through contour bounding, a technique of plowing at a right-angle to the slope and reducing water run-off with unplowed strips in between sections of the field. They are also planting dual-purpose crops, like sorghum. People eat the sorghum grains (typically as flour) and the farmers feed the stalks and leaves to their goats.

Farmers store stalks and leaves on top of this shade structure, which are later fed to their goats.
Under the project, 280 goats were distributed to participants, and the average sorghum yield increased by 37%. Animals, as a source of income, food and manure, improve participants’ resilience to climate change through diversification of resources. In the next year of the project, participants will form cooperatives for increased market access and create home gardens to boost nutrition and self-sufficiency in food production.
Goats, as a source of income, food, and manure, improve participants’ resilience to climate change through diversification of resources.
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About the Author

Julie Savane is the Senior Manager, Programs, on Rise Against Hunger's Global Impact team. She works with our partners to design and implement agriculture and income initiatives for smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs.

More Posts by Julie Savane

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.