Feeding Luri Payam: women farmers grow maize and gardens

Project Story

In Luri Payam, Juba County, South Sudan, many women and vulnerable households depend on small-scale farming to feed their families and survive. Land is one of the few resources communities still rely on, yet for many families it is not producing enough to meet their daily food needs. Women, especially widows, female-headed households, returnees, internally displaced families, and poor rural households, carry the heaviest burden of feeding children and caring for their families, but they often have the least access to farming inputs, agricultural knowledge, and financial support.

Hope for Women Initiative Development Organization (HWIDO) is a women-led local organization working to empower women and vulnerable communities through practical, community-based solutions. In Luri Payam, we have seen how women are eager to farm and provide for their families, but they continue to face major barriers that limit their productivity and leave them trapped in hunger and poverty. This project was developed to respond directly to those challenges by supporting women farmers and vulnerable households to improve maize production and kitchen gardening for food security, nutrition, and livelihoods.

The project seeks to raise USD 20,000 to support women and vulnerable households in Luri Payam with the resources they need to make their land productive. The funding will be used to provide quality maize seeds, simple farming tools, land preparation support, women farmer training, and technical guidance on improved farming and kitchen gardening practices. The project will also promote practical household gardens so that families can produce food close to their homes, improve dietary diversity, and reduce dependence on irregular market supplies.

Our vision is simple but powerful: women should be able to use their land to feed their children, generate income, and build resilience for the future. Through this project, women farmers will receive support to cultivate maize more effectively, improve their farming skills, and establish small household gardens that can supplement family nutrition and income. In addition to farming inputs, the project will build women’s knowledge in land preparation, planting, weeding, crop management, post-harvest handling, seed preservation, and climate-smart farming methods that can help them cope with changing weather conditions.

This project is not only about farming; it is about restoring dignity, confidence, and opportunity to women who have remained strong despite years of hardship. In Luri Payam, many families survive from one season to the next with little certainty about whether they will harvest enough food. A failed season can mean hunger, debt, school dropout, poor nutrition, and increased vulnerability for women and children. By strengthening women’s access to land use, seeds, training, and practical support, this project will help them move from dependency toward self-reliance.

Our Challenges

The women and families we work with face several serious challenges that make farming difficult:

1. Limited access to quality seeds and tools

Most women farmers in Luri Payam use recycled seeds or low-quality local seed that produces poor yields. Many also farm using only hand hoes and basic tools, which limits the size of land they can cultivate and reduces productivity.

2. Poverty and lack of capital

Many vulnerable households do not have money to hire labor, prepare land, buy seeds, transport produce, or invest in simple agricultural improvements. Even when women have land available, they often cannot afford the basic inputs needed to farm effectively.

3. Climate shocks and unpredictable rainfall

Changes in rainfall patterns, dry spells, and extreme weather continue to affect farming in South Sudan. Women farmers often plant without enough knowledge of climate-smart practices, making them more vulnerable to crop loss and low harvests.

4. Low agricultural knowledge and extension support

Most women farmers in the target area have limited access to training on improved maize production, kitchen gardening, soil management, pest control, post-harvest handling, and storage. Without technical support, yields remain low and food losses remain high.

5. Food insecurity and malnutrition

Many households in Luri Payam face repeated food shortages. Women are expected to feed their families, yet they often do so with very limited resources. Poor harvests mean poor diets, especially for children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.

6. Heavy burden on women

Women are responsible for farming, childcare, cooking, water collection, and many household tasks. This heavy workload reduces the time and energy they can dedicate to farming, business, or skills development.

How the Funds Will Be Used

The USD 20,000 requested will help HWIDO support women farmers and vulnerable households through:

Provision of quality maize seeds

Purchase of basic farming tools such as hoes, rakes, watering cans, and other simple farm implements

Land preparation support for selected women groups and vulnerable households

Training on maize production, kitchen gardening, composting, crop spacing, weeding, and post-harvest handling

Promotion of household kitchen gardens to improve nutrition and diversify food sources

Community follow-up, coaching, and technical support to women farmers throughout the farming season

Basic support for coordination, monitoring, and community mobilization to ensure the project reaches the intended beneficiaries effectively

Way Forward

Despite these challenges, we believe the way forward is to invest directly in women’s farming capacity and household food production systems. Women in Luri Payam already have the willingness to work, the local knowledge of their land, and the determination to support their families. What they need is practical support, access to inputs, and training that can help them turn their efforts into better harvests and stronger livelihoods.

Through this project, HWIDO will work closely with women farmers, local leaders, and vulnerable households to create a more sustainable model of food production in Luri Payam. By combining maize farming with kitchen gardening, the project will help households produce staple food while also encouraging small home-based food production that improves nutrition. Women will not only receive seeds and tools, but also the skills to continue farming productively beyond the life of the project.

In the long term, this initiative will help women and their families to:

increase maize production and household food availability;

improve family nutrition through household kitchen gardens;

reduce vulnerability to hunger and rising food prices;

strengthen women’s confidence, participation, and economic contribution within their households and communities;

build resilience through improved farming practices and better use of available land.

By supporting this project, donors and partners will be investing in more than agriculture. They will be supporting women’s dignity, family nutrition, food security, and long-term resilience in one of the communities that needs it most. A contribution to this project means helping women turn land into food, effort into income, and hardship into hope.