The goal: Safe food for every home

It was a blisteringly hot day, near 100 degrees Fahrenheit — normal, though, in March for Kpone Katamanso, Ghana.

Sweat dripped and combined with dirt, building the texture we all know from days working in the garden. Chicago maroon T-shirts – and even a few emblazoned with "4 The Soil" – scattered the backdrop along with the smiles group members wore while covered in the sweat and soil. 

The group carefully, but excitedly, constructed a community garden for the community of Katamanso. While commonplace in the United States, community gardens are relatively new to Ghana.

The shared goal of safe food for every home united every person in the community and is what brought two Virginia Tech students to Ghana during spring break in March.

With a passion for food sovereignty and food security for all, Mary Michael Lipford Zahed, a graduate student in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the Eastern Shore Agricultural Research and Extension Center, and Megan Pollok, a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, built upon Zahed’s expertise and experience to help a global community.

“We wanted to find out the needs of this specific community and work from there,” Zahed said. “While most of us involved with the project had worked in Ghanaian communities before, this was a new area of the country for us. We learned about the community needs and the space so that this would be something that the people could maximize to help their lives and community excel.”

The community garden plans were developed in conjunction with Jeanette Ankoma-Sey, a Ghanaian-American professional landscape designer in Northern Virginia, and Virginia Tech horticulture alumni.

The design used feedback from the community to be able to help family members produce enough food for their families - specifically, foods they would enjoy and look forward to eating, such as okra, tomatoes, hot peppers, and carrots.

“Every step of the way, we made sure that this garden is something that is sustainable,” Zahed said. “Every decision we made was intentional and made jointly with the Katamanso community so that they were a part of the process from day one.”

The community garden needed to be truly theirs, she said.

“I learned about this in the classroom, but how do I create this and make this a project that's sustainable?” Pollok said. “Sometimes, when we think about doing work in communities, we have an idea in our mind about what that should look like. This project helped me to see that really at the forefront of everything, you must keep the community members in mind and ask what they need and what you can do for them.”

This work began years ago as a seed of inspiration from Ozzie Abaye ’92, professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Science, who has spent years helping communities in Africa.

Zahed didn’t know she wanted to study agriculture, but Abaye, now the Thomas B. Hutcheson Jr. Professor of Agronomy, showed her the impact that agriculture has on the world.

Zahed learned that without basic needs met, people can’t be the best versions of themselves, which led her to take a life-changing position 5,100 miles away from home in Ghana in 2021.

From there, she saw an opportunity to connect with her mentor about a cross-cultural collaboration.

Frank Kwekucher Ackah, professor of crop science at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, visited Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus in August 2023 to gather ideas and methods to improve community gardening in Ghana and see how Cooperative Extension in Virginia works. Ackah started a Facebook group called Home Gardening Ghana, which has grown to more than 287,000 members and spans beyond the Ghanaian border. He’s focused on fighting food insecurity through urban agriculture and urban community gardening, including home gardening. Ackah wants to expand this work across West Africa.

“This visit helped me know more about U.S. food systems and how Virginia Tech and Virginia Cooperative Extension services are working together to support community garden groups in the region,” Ackah said. “It also exposed me to the various community garden groups, their structures, and how they operate so that we can build on it to improve food security in Ghana and other African countries, through restructuring of the activities of Home Gardening Ghana.”

This was where Pollok first met Ackah – and instantly connected to his vision.

“His purpose was something that I was extremely excited to be a part of and to help in any way that I could,” Pollok said. “We really leaned on each other a lot through our knowledge and experience. We challenged each other and how we could make the community garden a reality.”

Ackah's insights into the operational strategies of community gardens in the U.S. provided a solid foundation for collaborative efforts aimed at enhancing food security and sovereignty in Ghana.

Ackah’s visit in August 2023, as well as Zahed’s work as both an undergraduate and graduate student at Virginia Tech, has led to cross-cultural collaboration from Virginia Tech and the University of Cape Coast to fight food insecurity. It also helped Ackah gain practical tools to expand Home Gardening Ghana upon returning to Cape Coast.

“You never want to devote yourself to something that doesn’t matter,” Zahed said of her year-long experience in Ghana. "My year in Ghana was a personal growth year for me. But we maintained our relationship and I hear from at least one of [the villagers] every day. That experience wasn’t just about me. It is much bigger than just one person and I’m thrilled to be able to help, even in a small way.”