Grow Strong, is dedicated to food sovereignty in Kenya. Along with community based organizations, local partners, and families, Grow Strong is promoting using underutilized local resources and traditional knowledge to revive local food security. 

Grow Strong works towards:

• Reviving self-sufficient, cooperative rural livelihoods free from poverty, hunger and disease in Kenya.
• Sustainably producing food and useful crops by using local resources and traditional knowledge. 
• Promoting a nutritious locally grown diet sufficient for good health.
• Conserving biodiversity and reviving the natural and diverse ecosystems.

Grow Strong recognizes that communities that were once stable in providing food for themselves as well creating a surplus are facing chronic levels of hunger and malnutrition. The mainstream approach to global food insecurity needs to be reexamined as short-sided interventions like promoting hybrid seeds and synthetic fertilizers have not helped and have in many ways exacerbated the problem!

We have observed that sustainable systems that ensured food and nutritional security were interrupted by external factors that altered ways that were once working for small-scale farmers and family food security. Conventional agriculture extension messages introduced conventional methods of cropping, hybrid seeds varieties, and new industrial opportunities that robbed communities of valuable manpower as able youth migrated to urban areas in search of elusive formal employment leaving vast lands and resources extremely underutilized. Local people were led to believe that their agricultural techniques were primitive and production efforts should be streamlined by steering away from traditional foods like sorghum, millet, cassava, sweet potatoes and highly nutritious indigenous vegetables.

There are several approaches to address food security at the local level. We believe that many lasting solutions lie within these affected communities and their local resources and this is the first place to start. At Grow Strong we know that there are valuable lessons to be retaught and relearned from traditional wisdom and applying these lessons can provide effective solutions to the food insecurity situation in Kenya using less external inputs and resources, thus easier to adopt and implement.

It is high time we played a part in helping communities to thrive and not to survive! Grow Strong advocates for healthy local food security utilizing local resources and traditional farm education led by villagers with this wisdom. Join us so that together, we Grow Strong.