Income Generating Activities- Bosnia And Herzegovina
The COVID-19 pandemic affected all aspects of our life and it did not discriminate, and with that, our support to underprivileged families became more important than ever before.
One of our main goals was to alleviate poverty and living conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Greenhouse Project.
The establishment of greenhouse vegetable production allowed for a steady income and improvements in household living conditions for beneficiaries.
One of our beneficiaries, Amela, is a unemployed university student living with her parents just outside the city of Zenica. Her and her family had to move to Zenica after the B&H floods in 2014, but prior to that, they were living in a village with a lot of land which allowed them to grow vegetables and raise cattle. Due to the floods, they lost everything — their home, land, and stables. The family income consists only of Amela’s father’s pension, amounting to nearly 200 euros.
MAUSA worked hard to bring a change in this family’s life by donating a 100 m2 greenhouse, along with an online training course on greenhouse vegetable production.
“It is hard to express how much this means to us,” said Amela.
“Before we had to leave our village, we worked very hard, had a lot of land, grew vegetables for our family and for sale, but now we live on this small portion of land and are not able to produce enough food, not even for ourselves. But the greenhouse will change it all. It allows us to produce much more in this small space.”
Although we were not able to organize our pre-planned, face-to-face training course on greenhouse vegetable production due to obvious reasons, our alternative online training with an expert agronomist was a success. With many of our beneficiaries not having access to the internet, we mailed them a printed handbook on greenhouse vegetable production, along with the contact information of the agronomist.
Through His help and your generous donations, we were able to:
- Achieve the generation of income through production of greenhouse vegetables
- Ensure there is food on the table for 200 beneficiaries in 10 municipalities
Beneficiaries were selected in cooperation with municipality representatives, based on employment status, monthly income, and number of family members
A couple days after education process, Edin received new greenhouse with irrigation system and seedlings. Then he started growing vegetables.
Six months after he received a greenhouse. MA had visited him and his family and found Edin produce the salad, onion and sweet potato. Edins says that the greenhouse has changed their lives. Now they always have the fresh vegetables and the surplus of vegetables they are selling to the local market. They are very thankful for greenhouse and they have only the best words for whole greenhouse project implemented by Muslim Aid.
In the spring crop season Nadija and her family produced tomato and pepper in greenhouse and earned by now about 800 KM. They sold the products on the market and on the doorstep. When we did this field visit Nadija was not at home.
Nadija`s mother told us that she is very grateful for this donation and emphases that this donation is very useful for young families who live in rural areas. She hopes that this kind of donation continue in the future.
Željko points out that the training gave him good starting point in area of plants production in greenhouse. After that, Željko received new greenhouse with all equipment and seedlings for fall crop.
At the moment when we did this monitoring visit Željko growing salad, onion and spinach. His wife told that most of this vegetables product they will use for feeding his family. Surplus of the production they will sell on the local market.
At the future period, Munib plans to continue with his greenhouse production. Munib says that he and his family are more that satisfied with whole greenhouse project.
