Kigali Farms is engaged in fighting malnutrition in Northern and Western Rwanda by helping rural families grow, eat and market tree oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), an outstanding and affordable source of dietary diversity.

 

How the project works

We work in 7 north-western Districts, on a sector-by-sector basis. We partner with local healthcare workers, who have intimate, daily contact with families in rural Rwanda. They know their resident families’ living conditions and health challenges. By educating their constituents about the benefits of mushrooms in their diet, they carry forward this information into each household. 

We teach our partner healthcare workers to grow mushrooms, through 12-week long intensive training courses at our campus in Musanze. The first wave of these trainings have been with healthcare workers from Kabilizi, Karwasa, Cyabaralika and Bucyinanyana (Musanze District) and Rwasa, Nyangwe, Buramba and Kidakama (Burera District). 

The result is 3-fold: health care workers can understand and teach others how to successfully grow tree oysters; they learn to market this new produce in their communities; and they are best positioned to monitor health improvements of their constituents who add mushrooms to their diet.