For over ten years, Le Korsa has been helping women in rural Tambacounda start community gardens so they can grow food for their families or sell it at market. These gardens have become some of our most successful projects, bringing income and better nutrition to rural villages that lacked access to an array of fresh vegetables. But behind the success of these gardens is a number of steps, from organizing the women to digging wells for year-round water to securing land. And one part of the process never ends: learning.

For most of the women, learning how to manage a market garden with a range of crops is decidedly different from growing peanuts or corn during the rainy season. That’s where Abib Dieye, Le Korsa’s agricultural trainer, comes in.

Abib is a native of Thiès who earned his degree in horticulture from the National Horticulture School of Cambèrene in Dakar, and has completed further training at the Rodale Institute Regenerative Agriculture Research Center, Senegal’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Management, and the Songhai Center in Benin. He is a specialist in all aspects of gardening, farming and tree growing, from seed to sowing to harvest. Abib’s role is to transmit all this knowledge to the women, helping them to become competent gardeners themselves.

“Our gardens are really classrooms,” Abib said. “The women are learning a whole range of techniques including starting plants from seed, sowing seeds, aerating the soil, making bio-compost, sizing garden beds and weeding them properly. But they also learn how to organize themselves and work in a team to become a stronger community. Even the ones who might not normally talk to one another, Abib, who lives in Sinthian, works with the women on a daily basis, whether it’s in Sinthian, Dialico, Gadapara, or Fass. He travels between the gardens on his motorbike, ensuring the various teams are planting and harvesting at the right time, and absorbing the new skills they are constantly learning, such as the proper placement of seedlings in the drip irrigation systems that were installed last year.

“There is a lot to take in, so everything I teach requires reinforcement and repetition, and being present to ensure the work goes smoothly,” Abib added.

Between the four main gardens, there are over two hundred women growing eggplant, bitter eggplant, onions, okra, peppers, tomatoes, and harvesting fruit from banana, mango, moringa and papaya trees. The results have been transformative, but Abib knows that sitting still isn’t an option if the gardens are to endure.

“Outside of the gardens, the women are also learning how to transform their products into jams or dried powders, which we do with the moringa tree’s leaves,” Abib said. “So thanks to all the education we are offering these women, we are ensuring that they can sustain the vitality of these gardens for the long-term,” he added.