Gardening Under Drought Conditions: Using the Permagarden Approach to Improve Food Security and Income Generation for Mother Care Group Participants in Karamoja

This learning brief is part of a series bringing together experiences and lessons learned from the Apolou Resilience Food Security Activity (2017—2023). The briefs are designed for practitioners, including local government representatives, civil society organizations, and other actors working on issues related to climate change, water point sustainability and management, and sanitation.

This learning brief presents select findings and lessons learned from implementing the Permagarden Approach under Apolou, a 6-year USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)-funded activity in Karamoja. It discusses the impact of permagardens on participants’ food security, income, and ability to contribute to group savings accounts. It also explores the factors that motivated participants to adopt permagarden techniques and provides recommendations for how to improve the roll-out of the Permagarden Approach to new populations. This brief will be useful for development practitioners considering permagardens as a way to improve food security and household resilience in semi-arid regions.

To learn more about the Apolou RFSA, check out the additional briefs below:

• Learning from Different Models to Address Water Point Management in Karamoja: Apolou’s Integrated Community-Based Management System Plus (ICBMS+) Approach
• Beyond CLTS: Learnings from Apolou’s Community-Led Total Sanitation Plus (CLTS+) Approach