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March 2021

Hello ,

Martha, farmer and beekeeper

Martha is a 47-year-old woman, living with her son and her parents on a farm in Chibuye B village, about 25 km from Chipata town. She is a true entrepreneurial woman and is always open to new knowledge. When the 2019 business training opportunity came along, she did not hesitate for a moment and signed up. After an interview, she and 19 other farmers from the area were selected to attend a business training. During the training, Martha focused on expanding her fruit tree project. Her goal is to sell more oranges. A homework assignment in the training was to visit potential new customers and find out if they were willing to buy her oranges. With this exercise, Martha found a new customer, a boarding school in the area.
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In this project, Jacana had eight sponsored pumps to distribute. Martha was selected because she proved to be very motivated and persistent during the training and had a good plan.
After Martha's own contribution, the borehole was drilled and the pump installed. The water is mainly used for the orange trees, the household and even some neighbours use it.
Another part of the support was an organic farming training (2020). There, Martha learned how to make compost, which is of great benefit to her. It saves her a lot of money, because she does not need to buy artificial fertilizer and the compost improves the soil structure. Besides making compost, she learned how to graft the orange trees herself, which makes it easier for her to expand.
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Martha was also lucky to participate in a basic beekeeping course (2020). She had one traditional hive when she started the training and she always found it very difficult to harvest the honey. She usually asked others to harvest the honey for her. Part of the training was that she received a partly sponsored top bar hive, smoker and two bee suits. Using a top bar hive and suits makes it much easier for Martha to harvest the honey and her bee suit protects her from the defensive African bee. The bees are pollinating the orange blossom and hopefully this will result in more harvests in the future.
beehives
After the training, Martha made 13 more top bar hives. This shows that Martha is an enterprising and motivated woman who utilizes every opportunity.

With the help of donors, such as in this case Stichting Tikondane and Transform International, Jacana can do all this wonderful work and ensure that small-scale entrepreneurs, like Martha, grow step by step. They have always been working extremely hard and deserve our support to reach the next level.
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New book about self supply

Jacana is very pleased that Sally Sutton together with John Butterworth have written a book on self supply in the water sector. This book describes the advantages and limits of self supply and how it is realised in different countries. Jacana is also mentioned in the book, so it is definitely worth reading. You can download this book for free (choose the free e-book or order a printed version).
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