As Sierra Leone emerges from Ebola crisis, new innovations are helping poor villages

DESERET NEWS  by Kimberley Curtis                                                                       April 29, 2015

Thirteen years after civil war devastated the country, basic infrastructure and services are still lacking in many parts of Sierra Leone. This means transporting food throughout the country is prohibitively expensive and staple foods are out-priced for many of the roughly 60 percent of the population that lives in poverty. 

     HESE AFFORDABLE GREENHOUSE

In particular, basic vegetables such as carrots and tomatoes are in short supply in the country for most of the year as they are only grown in a few regions with a limited season. You can’t eat your vegetables if you can’t afford to buy them, which is one of the reasons why Sierra Leone has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world.

One answer may lie in an innovative program created by Pennsylvania State University’s Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (PSU-HESE) program and World Hope International to bring greenhouses to rural farming cooperatives in Sierra Leone, giving communities better food security and opportunities for nutrition.

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