What is Shamba Maisha?
Shamba Maisha (which means "Farm Life" in Kiswahili) is an agricultural livelihood that aims to improve food security, health, and nutrition through sustainable farming and climate-adaptive tools.
Our Team
Our team is led by transdisciplinary team made up of researchers, physicians, engineers, farmers, statisticians, nutritionists, economists, educators, and social scientists from Kenya, Canada, and the US working to develop and test new approaches to improve health and empower communities affected by HIV in rural Kenya.
Our Collaborators
National Institutes Health (NIH) funds our studies.
KickStart International, an international NGO that designs, promotes and mass-markets simple moneymaking irrigation tools that smallholder farmers buy and use to start highly profitable family enterprises. KickStart developed the MoneyMaker Starter Pump, MoneyMaker Hip Pump, and MoneyMaker Max Irrigation Pump that are used in our studies. A Seed of Maize is a powerful short film by Emmy award-winning director Topaz Adizes and award-winning producer Ofir Kedar. A Seed of Maize follows a poor farming family as they face the biggest dilemma of their lives. Shot in rural Zambia, this raw and honest story explores some of the most pressing issues of our time—poverty, health, and girls’ education—against the backdrop of tradition, community, and family.
Agriculture Training
An outline of the training manual is available.