Mushrooms, refugees and building resilience
Originally published on Running with Mushrooms, as a collaboration with Samantha Koches of Nourish All, in September 2023 
Image description: A man, Bemeriki Bisimwa Dusabe, founder of Rwamwanja Rural Foundation, is wearing a green work coat and tan trousers. He stands in a courtyard over a large mound of mushroom substrate, preparing to grow mushrooms in Uganda’s Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement.
How mushrooms can impact the lives of refugee and host communities
Visiting my first mushroom farm in Nairobi, the last thing I expected was to bump into an individual who would open up an entire world previously unbeknownst to me: the intriguing, inspiring and complex world of how East Africa’s aid and NGO sectors intersect with mushrooms. This individual was Samantha Koches: founder of Nourish All, permaculturist, agribusiness consultant, designer and builder of edible gardens, and (to my delight!) avid grower of oyster mushrooms.
On a mission to improve fresh food security and livelihoods for vulnerable communities in East Africa (in particular women, children and those with refugee status), Samantha embodies an infectious enthusiasm and passion for this work - she’s all smiles, and I’m all for it! In addition to other brilliant projects and partnerships such as with Ugandan community-based organisation Eco-Agric, Nourish All collaborates with refugee-led organisations (RLOs) in Ugandan refugee settlements - specifically with the Hodari Foundation of Kyaka II and Rwamwanja Rural Foundation of Rwamwanja. In partnership with these foundations Nourish All imparts skills training, capacity building, resources and seed capital for oyster mushroom farms. Important work, considering these settlements are home to around 122k and 93k refugees respectively.
Image description: A photograph set in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement, Uganda, at Day of the African Child celebration. Eight people stand in a grassy area looking and smiling at the camera. They are members of the NGO Nourish All and the refugee-led organisation Hodari Foundation.
Let’s take a moment to digest the current state of the refugee crisis in this region…
According to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), as of 2023 Uganda hosts nearly 1.6 million refugees and asylum seekers and is Africa’s largest refugee-hosting country, the majority of which originally hail from South Sudan and the DRC. While the UNHCR plays a large role in providing protection, assistance, and solutions to millions of forcibly displaced and stateless people worldwide, there is sadly a story here of massive underfunding, and of limited chance to return home. Of the amount required, only 30% is funded, leaving a funding gap of 70% (!!). This gap is acutely impacting refugees in 2023; as of July 2023, WFP withdrew its already meagre monthly cash assistance for thousands of refugees across Uganda.
It’s a complex picture - in short, underfunding is compounded with issues such as increased cost of foods and resources caused by the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, overexploitation through intensive agriculture, overfishing, mass irrigation and even deforestation, meaning less firewood and charcoal needed for household energy. The ecosystems that supply food, medicines and other livelihoods are no longer providing their full services. What this means day to day for individuals is, amongst other things, no more access to basic health kits or food stipends, and rising levels of malnutrition and anaemia.
“Underfunding threatens to undermine or reverse modest gains already made in nutrition, health and financial inclusion, and leaves minimal resources to respond to acute and growing protection needs. Humanitarian partners will remain overstretched, unable to create economic opportunities for refugees to graduate out of poverty or even ensure delivery of life-saving assistance.
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Nourish All’s partnerships work with primarily Congolese refugees. Amid sporadic fighting between armed groups and Congolese armed forces and attacks by armed militia in parts of eastern DRC, thousands who fled to Uganda have chosen to return home. Most others, however, remain uncertain about the future and are opting to stay in Uganda. Samantha notes anecdotally how Bemeriki Bisimwa Dusabe, founder of Rwamwanja Rural Foundation, and Janvier Hafasha, founder of Hodari Foundation, have been living in Uganda for 17 and 10 years respectively, with no plans to return home.
It may be a grim picture, but sadly it’s not only extreme - it’s reality.
When outside funding and support is cut or significantly reduced, the best route forward surely is self-resilience: it’s up to those with refugee status themselves to improve the self-reliance of their communities, their livelihoods, and to mitigate their environmental impact. Insert our RLOs and NGOs!
“I think it’s incredibly important to shift from aid to resilience building.”
Image description: Eight members of Hodari Foundation stand and kneel together on the front stoep of the Hodari Foundation office, with the company logo printed on the wall behind them. They proudly display their graduation certificates after completing Nourish All’s training on grain spawn production. To their right stands Samantha Koches of Nourish All.
Alongside training in permaculture, gardening and mushroom farming, Nourish All offers workshops and capacity building on food value-addition - for example training in processing and solar-drying mushrooms and support on branding, marketing, and business incubation. Ultimately, Nourish All and the RLO partners share a vision of building a cooperative across Southwest refugee settlements to sell dried mushrooms, mushroom jelly (yep, you heard right!), mushroom powder, and turning this powder into a tasty nutritional soup, all as methods to build livelihoods. Community members are involved in the full circular fungal economy being created: from sourcing matoke leaves and wood-ash for banana-leaf tek (how cool?!), building bespoke grow rooms and incubation chambers using locally sourced materials, to inoculating, fruiting, harvesting, drying, cooking and selling mushrooms locally, all to help enhance food security and build resilience.
Oyster mushrooms are a fantastic solution fit for the challenges of a refugee settlement. They’re fast-fruiting, grow easily almost anywhere on almost anything, do not require expansive land or space, are culinarily versatile and delicious. They offer immense health benefits, especially for mothers and children, and are a good source of protein. Considering that refugees in Uganda face issues with poor shelters and limited access to sufficient agricultural land, growing and selling oyster mushrooms provides a significant and important potential to help address economic and nutritional challenges.
Image description: Janvier Hafasha, founder of Hodari Foundation, showing their successful mushroom farming to UNHCR Team Lead of Kyaka II Settlement, Innocent Ndira. They stand inside a mushroom growing room, with wooden shelves along the walls, laden with oval-shaped bags of oyster mushroom substrate, white with mycelium and fruiting oyster mushrooms.
“[Mushrooms are] very easy to adopt into diets, and oyster mushrooms are delicious. So yes, people are eating them! They get excited because it is a high value, high nutrition food and particularly in a refugee settlement, where they were relying on cash and food assistance from the World Food Program by way of rice and beans and grain, which by the way, has disappeared as of July. So interventions like building local food supply and having that be nutritious and culturally appropriate are very important.”
Image description: Three portrait photographs alongside each other. Left: Production units at Hodari Foundation in Kyaka II Settlement showing rows of mushroom growing blocks sprouting oyster mushrooms. Middle: Safari Katwe, the lead mushroom grower at Hodari Foundation, wearing a blue t-shirt, smiling and showing his abundant harvest of oyster mushrooms to the viewer. Right: Close-up image of a mushroom spore print on canvas, made during Nourish All’s grain spawn training with Rwamwanja Rural Foundation.
Interestingly, there is also a social impact of this work: outside of refugee communities these RLOs are working together with their host Ugandans, fostering inter-national relationships - for example the relationship fostered between these groups and Eco-Agric Uganda.
Image description: A group of refugees making use of an UNHCR tarp, one of few items given to new refugee arrivals, to prepare “banana-leaf tek” mushroom gardens with Hodari Foundation
Mushrooms not only help build resilience, but they’re also cool! Growing and interacting with mushrooms and the mycological community is fun, a creative outlet and a vehicle for social connections. In October 2023 these mycophiles will convene in Northwestern Uganda for East Africa’s first mushroom festival, African Mushroom Rising festival - a super cool initiative inspired by the concept of a rising sun, suggesting a new beginning for communities through fungi.
As the refugee crisis shows no sign of letting up any time soon, I see hope in the growth of the global focus on mushrooms as a viable protein source, and the increased hype around everything mushrooms can offer. It is my hope that Nourish All and their community-driven work with RLOs such as Hodari Foundation and Rwamwanja Rural Foundation are hero’d, supported, and are able to continue to act as enablers and conduits to these communities thriving, not just surviving.
Image description: Samantha Koches of Nourish All and Bemeriki Bisimwa Dusabe of Rwamwanja Rural Foundation stand side by side. Samantha is holding a blue basket filled with a fresh harvest of oyster mushrooms in Uganda’s Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement
⚡Stay tuned! Running with Mushrooms visited both Hodari Foundation in Kyaka II and Rwamwanja Rural Foundation in Rwamwanja refugee settlements in October 2023, before attending the Africa Mushroom Rising Festival in Hoima.
🎙️Listen to Running with Mushrooms’s podcast conversation with Samantha Koches here, where we explore the complexity of the aid industry in East Africa (the good and the ugly), how growing mushrooms can help to build resilience and lead to positive social impact, plus a super cool segment on what it’s like to be Samantha: the daily grind, pros and cons of NGO work, as well as all the ways you can involved. Check it out here!
Mush love 🍄
All images courtesy of Nourish All - thank you!