Community: Happiness or Pain

Occasionally, a participant of the home gardening project visits other participants’. He/she is then trained through helping them. However, in one village, a participant had refused to visit a particular garden.

Vakarai DS Division has been affected by a prolonged conflict situation. Therefore, distrust is occasionally found even amongst the neighbours of the same village. Thus, a JEN social worker and a professional psychologist have organised an opportunity for members of the village to talk to each other. As a consequence, distrust amongst the community has decreased to the level in which the participants can mutually visit each others’ residence.

Now, the locals are enjoying working together. Through sharing happiness or pain, the community’s mutual trust and sense of unity is strengthened.   

The JEN’s home garden project does not only improve the nutritional condition of the local people through cultivating vegetables or support the household’s financial conditions, but does also contributes to ameliorate the strained social conditions of the people and strengthen the mutual trust amongst the local communities.