Community Integrated Dev Initiative CIDI Community Integrated Development Initiative (CIDI) in partnership with OXFAM will pilot a 12 months (February 2023 to January 2024)project Urban Food Hives: Building Resilient, Nutritious Equitable Food Systems in Kampala and Soroti. The North Star for this project is to “Building effective and Inclusive Food Governance in Kampala and Soroti whilst sustainably delivering safe and nutritious foods for all, amidst climate change challenges and post pandemic.” This will be achieved through intervention points of a) Enhance technical capacities and access to technologies/inputs for youth and women within the urban poor households for scaling up urban farming. b) Facilitating favourable and inclusive urban food market development and consumer awareness for healthy and nutritious foods. CIDI will engage community members, leaders and consumers in the two cities so as implement these interventions.
Background

SecondMuse and Oxfam have been working together to map the food system and identify where and how to intervene to build an Urban Food Hive in Uganda. For close to 5 months CIDI participated in their design workshops and a one week design intensive aimed at building an evidence base, and a robust framework for 3 key programs to deliver in Uganda to build resilient, equitable and nutritious food systems. With support from Oxfam CIDI will pilot the two concepts in the cities of Kampala and Soroti.  In the 12 month pilot CIDI will develop a pop up urban farm and skills hub in the neighbourhoods of Nakawa,Kampala and Soroti as well as facilitate consumer awareness for healthy and nutritious foods. During this period CIDI will encourage good nutrition practices among the community members aimed at promoting better health.

Rationale
The Urban food hivespilot project aims at transforming food systems so that they are more sustainable and equitable. With urbanisation food systems have become complex and poverty has also made it difficult for community members to access nutritious and healthy foods especially in the cities of Uganda. Thus there is a need for effective and inclusive food governance in Kampala and Soroti so as to sustainably deliver safe and nutritious foods for all amidst climate change challengesand pandemic.

Objective(s)
The objectivities of this pilot is to:
• To provide training in appropriate and scale able urban gardening technologies and practices
• Create champions that take it home, grow food and show others how too
• Set up a Centre of Excellence in the neighbourhood to demonstrate methods and approaches for best practice urban farming and developing nutritious, resilient food production.

Approach
In the 12 months the Urban Food Systems will provide an approach that engages and builds entire ecosystemsthat can support a new vision for the future of food. Different urban gardening techniques will be taught and rolled out so as to help communities to grow their own food in their neighbourhoods. Furthermore consumers will be linked to markets that produce nutritious andhealthy foods.
Activities;
The activities that will be implemented include:

Concept 1: Pop Up Farm and Skills Hub
• Concept Inception Meeting and Identification of stakeholders to familiarize key stakeholders about the project interventions
• Identification and set up of land for demonstration
• Develop training manuals and materials to set up the Farm and Skills Hub and the home set ups
• Trainings (*5 rounds of 5 people)and set up of beds at the Farm and Skills Hub
• Provide trainees with starter kits (tools and equipment, farm inputs etc )
• Engagement with community members on the benefits of the urban farming
• Working bees set up of home gardens and maintenance
• Quarterly check back meetings (offer farm technical support visit) and checkon the progress of the urban gardens

Concept 3: Urban food market development and consumer awareness for healthy and nutritious foods
• Consumer awareness meetings on health and nutritious foods
• Media engagements on healthy and nutritious food.Both online and in print selected media outletswill be used to provide information about healthy and nutritious foods. Social media influencers will also be used to publicise this too.
• Radio talk shows to create awareness for healthy and nutritious foods
• Production of Gingos to create awareness for healthy and nutritious foods
• Develop and distribute IEC materials in different languages on healthy and nutritious foods to ensure the wider community understand and can change their feeding habits
• Participation in Food and Safety Day country events, fairs and exposeg the East African Food Security Symposium and Expo, World Food Safety Day etc
• Bi-annual reflection meetings and Documentation of success stories to be able to understand, validateand credit the work of the project pilot in a bid to solicit for more funding toimplement the 5 year project.

Expected Results
• Establishment of model home food gardens in the two cities Kampala and Soroti
• Increased community awareness on healthy andnutritious foods and improvement on food feeding and diets among the families. The IEC materials will further enrich their knowledge too.
• Approximately 40 people trained on urban farming and the sale of these produces will provide income for the families too
• Local media outlets will champion sensitization agenda on healthy and nutritious foods
• Create market for the produces displayed through the contacts created during the expos and fares attended
• Commitment from local government leadership to support urban gardening in their communities