Staff Blog

It’s only after you spend time here in Zambia that you start to better appreciate the challenges faced by the average rural citizen.  The SAM Project was started in 2007 to help complement Overland’s vision of Holistic Christian Rural Development.  Our original task of distributing food packages to community schools was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the need we experienced here.  Zambians enjoy a stable democracy, have suffered no civil wars or catastrophic environmental disasters, aren’t known to sponsor terrorists, and they are so darned cheerful and polite, that their lives of life of ordinary, grinding need simply aren’t newsworthy. 

Despite that lack of headline-grabbing, the fact remains that 70% of Zambians live below the poverty line (of $2 per day), and fully 49% of under-five children in the entire country are stunted due to chronic malnourishment.  This stunting not only means that the kids are under-height; tragically, it means that their cognitive development is also impaired.  So the SAM Project focuses its efforts on sustainable interventions that provide nutritive and economic alternatives in villages that are historically dependent on rainy-season maize production for most of their food needs.  We figure that families who have money to spend, and healthy foods on which to spend it, will be giving their kids the best chance of surviving and even thriving in a world of increasing economic, environmental, and social challenges.

Watch this space to learn about SAM’s activities in 2010….

SAM Project garden in the Nyawa Chiefdom