🔶Field Report🔶 Poultry Farming to Support the Family: Grace's Struggle and Success

PLAS implements the HOPE project, which supports impoverished families, primarily those headed by HIV-positive single mothers, in improving their livelihoods and career planning through poultry farming.

In this report, we share the situation of Grace's family, who are participating in the HOPE project.

Grace, raising seven children

Grace is currently 65 years old and is raising seven children and grandchildren. She says that before participating in the project, life was difficult and full of hardships, with school fees often being paid two or three times late during the term, and times when she could not afford medicine.

She joined the HOPE project in March 2022 and currently serves as the chairperson of her poultry farming group.

She has a reputation within the poultry group for being excellent at caring for the birds, and she is steadily expanding her poultry farming operations.
When we visited, the chickens were about four months old, and it was almost time to sell them.

Growing to manage 85 chickens

All 35 chicks provided by PLAS were raised to be healthy and strong.
What surprised us was that Grace had purchased and raised an additional 56 chicks on her own.
She is currently raising about 85 chickens.

When we asked about the price of the chicks Grace bought herself, she said they were 320 Ksh each.
When we asked if she thought that was a bit expensive, she explained that even though the price was high, she chose to buy chicks that were already a month old and slightly larger to avoid the risk of them dying while they were still small.

She learned how to raise chickens through PLAS training and purchased the additional chicks with financial support from those around her to further expand her business.
It was clear that she is moving forward with her poultry farming using a well-thought-out strategy.

The 85 chickens she is raising represent the second cycle of poultry farming for Grace.
A "cycle" refers to the period from raising chicks for several months until they are sold.

While the second cycle is going well, Grace actually faced various hardships during her first cycle of poultry farming.

Learning from failure and moving forward

In the first cycle, PLAS supported Grace with 40 chicks.

At that time, 24 of the chicks died, leaving only 16 survivors.
As the number of chicks dying increased day by day, she spent those days in anxiety.

The 16 surviving chickens were sold for funerals in the neighborhood or to nearby restaurants, generating an income of about 10,000 yen.

Although she did not make as much profit as she had targeted, she was still able to use a portion of it for her children's school fees and uniforms.

Reflecting on the first cycle, Grace says,“My knowledge of chicken vaccines and medicine was not sufficient.”

This point is also something we need to reflect on.
Of course, our training covers vaccines and medicine, but it also means we were not able to conduct the training in a way that ensured sufficient understanding.
Improving the quality of the chicks we distribute also became a challenge.

After that, we provided further training, and Grace's knowledge and skills improved significantly. We also carefully selected the suppliers for the chicks supported by PLAS and worked to improve their quality.
As a result, by the second cycle, Grace's poultry business had grown to raising 85 chickens.

What do you value most from what you learned in the poultry training?When asked, she told us,
Keeping the coop and water clean, and feeding them at the scheduled times.She also told us,Because I have the coop that I was able to build with PLAS's support, I can protect the chickens.

Her goal for the future is to raise 100 chickens.

Her daughter, Iddi, who is in the eighth grade of primary school, also helps with the poultry farming.
My favorite subject is Swahili. I want to be a nurse in the future.she told us with a smile.

Both mother and daughter said, We want to convey our gratitude to the supporters in Japan.

Thank you for reading this far.

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