Doha: Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has launched the ‘Household Garden’ project to enhance food security in the beleaguered parts of Rif Dimashq in Syria, with $503,000 funding from the United Nations Development Programme.
The project involves growing fruitful plants on roofs, in balconies and spaces and around entrances of homes to provide the crops needed for the neighbourhoods to help reduce food prices. Specialists were sent to the target areas to guide the community on how to perform agricultural work.
About 2,000 families comprising 14,000 people are expected to benefit from the project, each cultivating an area of about 50 square metres as household garden. The project was planned to last one year, but extended for three months. Agriculture is done in two seasons: Winter crops and summer crops, including tomato, eggplant, molokhia, okra, zucchini, parsley and probably mushroom, depending on the needs of each area. The project is conducted in cooperation with the executive partner in Eastern Ghouta, Ghiras Al Nahda, a Syrian charity in Turkey.
Expanded to nearly $1.2m next season, the project aims to support the Syrians with bread, a staple food, by securing wheat for bakeries in northern Homs countryside to help provide bread for many host and internally displaced persons at low prices.The Peninsula
