CAP-OP2: Implementation & Evaluation - Training

While attending the NGO training programme I made contacts with few people who showed great interest in urban gardening, particularly Al Nada Society, “I Give “group. Al Nada is a veteran charity operating in Damascus mainly with orphans and vulnerable women. “I Give” on the other  is a group of young activities mainly interested in providing training. The group organizes training courses for free, however trainees are asked in return to contribute certain items that are eventually handed over to charities.

We held few meetings in January 2014 to discuss starting an initiative for providing training on urban agriculture together with home-based composting techniques, and developed a brief concept note.  

In February 22^nd, I was invited by I Give group to attend a one-day training they organized on “organic gardening at home”. The trainer, Fadi, turned out to be highly interested in permaculture and used an educational film by Geoff Lawton (Desert Oasis) as an example and eye-opener about the potential of good design. 2 of the 6 training hours were dedicated to the topic of soil health and home composting methods. This was highly useful for me in understanding why my early experiments did not work well, and based on this new understanding I started a new experiment in February 28^th which went quite well, and two more followed afterwards. Moreover, I contacted Fadi who holds a bachelor degree in computer engineering and runs a programming company  in Damascus Free Zone, and we agreed to expand on this project building on what he has already done.

It is worth noting that Al Nada Society approached Fadi in March to start a food-growing project in one shelter for internally displaced people, with funding received from UN Higher Commission for Refugees UNHCR. The role of Al Nada society was limited to providing the legal framework for Fadi to operate. Although I was entirely out of this project from beginning to end, however the lessons learned from this experience according to Fadi are highly valuable when planning for any similar initiative:

• It is due to the current security situation, executing such activities of public nature is only possible under the umbrella of a licensed entity such as an NGO.
• Working with displaced people in shelters proved to be quite challenging, because they are overwhelmed by negative feelings so motivating them to engaging them in positive action require tremendous work.
• Any initiative for spreading knowledge on urban agriculture, especially organic, requires in the first place a trained team of trainers. for the sake of the above project, Fadi had to work almost entirely alone yet sharing the credit with other contributing parties, Al Nada and UNHCR.