Location
Tamale, GHANA
Grantee
Francisca Biawurbi Anobila
Project
Green Meals for Change
Francisca Biawurbi Anobila
Francisca Biawurbi Anobila leads Hope for Children, Power for the Youth Ghana (HOCPY Ghana), a youth-led organization working in rural communities around Tamale, in Ghana’s Northern Region. Many of the schoolchildren she works with come from farming families where meat is seen as the only marker of good nutrition. Francisca set out to gently shift that belief, helping children discover that a healthy plate can be built from affordable, local vegetables already growing in their own communities. Through Green Meals for Change, she combined nutrition education with school gardens linked to Ghana’s National School Feeding Programme. The project’s visibility helped HOCPY Ghana gain admission into the Coalition of NGOs in Health in Ghana, and Francisca and her team now plan to expand the model to more communities across the Central Gonja District.
What the seed grant made possible
310
pupils, teachers, and school caterers directly reached
6
hands-on training sessions on plant-based nutrition across two primary schools
2
school gardens established to supply fresh vegetables for school meals
2400+
volunteer hours contributed to the project
The project
- The grant funded six training sessions at Sankagla M.A. Primary School and Zanzugu Yipa D.A. Primary School, teaching pupils and teachers about the nutritional value of local vegetables and plant-based meals.
- Two school gardens now give caterers a steady supply of fresh vegetables for meals served under Ghana’s National School Feeding Programme.
- Pupils learned to prepare simple, nutritious meals with ingredients found at home, and many began encouraging their families to try the vegetable dishes they had cooked in class.
- The project helped HOCPY Ghana gain admission into the Coalition of NGOs in Health in Ghana and drew local media coverage of its harvest celebration.
Francisca Biawurbi Anobila and HOCPY Ghana are helping schoolchildren in rural northern Ghana rethink what belongs on their plates. With TPP support, Green Meals for Change trained pupils and teachers at two primary schools in plant-based nutrition, directly reaching 310 people and mobilizing more than 2,400 volunteer hours. The two school gardens established through the project remain in place as living classrooms, supplying fresh vegetables to school meals and giving pupils a reason to keep practicing what they learned, while HOCPY Ghana prepares to bring the model to more communities across the Central Gonja District.