Yohana Mcha’s Hay Baler benefits her Orkolili neighbors

Yohana Mcha, headmistress of Orkolili Secondary school is an innovator who received a Pico grant in 2015 from ECHO through the IDIN program. She attended an innovation summit organized in Arusha in August 2014 at which she learned of the challenge she wanted to solve in her area: a way to store animal fodder plenty during the rainy season (March to June) and very scarce during the dry season (July to October and January to February). She decided to create a simple hay baler, a box using timber, which was completed during August last year. It was not fully used since at that time there was scarcity of grass. However, from March thru June this year her area received good rainfall and a bumper grass crop was grown ready for harvest.

Yohana and her neighbors used her box baler to make a pile of hay bales in her compound, stored ready to be used by her cattle during the dry season. She has seven cattle of which 5 are pregnant which need much grass for feed. She is happy about the simple hay baler she created and the way it has become an effective tool for her animals. Three neighbors have visited her this season and after seeing what she did with the box they borrowed it to make their hay; now they have promised to construct their own balers.