After a nice introduction to Kampala during the inspiration tour, our internship at VMG started on Friday! We met Joan and Bernard and started off with some field trips to Vertical Farms (VF) and passed by Arc Organics, which is the main B2B selling point for their soil Gimusa.
Later in the week, we also met Ashley, the sales manager. We brainstormed about possible improvements on the sales plan, starting with increasing awareness of the products in the surroundings of Kampala. We visited hotels, markets and schools which are the targeted selling points.
Wednesday, we got to meet the CEO and founder of VMG: Paul Matovu. This was definitely the most insightful day: we visited the Kyaka 2 refugee settlement in the Kyegegwa District in western Uganda. Together with volunteers from Save the Children (https://www.savethechildren.net/), we interviewed refugees about their current food security. A partnership with VMG could help tackling the problem of malnutrition. Response Innovation Lab (https://www.responseinnovationlab.com/) invited us to join the Launch of the Local Innovation for Nutrition Solutions (LINS) program. VMG and 4 other initiatives have been selected to participate in this program, congratulations!
Feel free to take a look at the VMG site: https://vmg.verticalandmicrogardening.org/