From the best-selling author of One Hen comes the inspiring story of one struggling farming family in Honduras and their journey to growing enough food to meet their needs. Based on the real story of farm transformation underway in Honduras and many other countries, this book offers children ways they can be part of the movement to grow "good gardens" and foster food security. Eleven-year-old Mar?a Luz and her family live on a small farm. This year their crop is poor, and they may not have enough to eat or to sell for other essentials, such as health care, school uniforms and books. When Mar?a's father must leave home to find work, she is left in charge of their garden. Then a new teacher comes to Mar?a's school and introduces her to sustainable farming practices that yield good crops. As Mar?a begins to use the same methods at home, she too sees improvements, which allow her family to edge their way out of the grip of the greedy "coyotes" -- the middlemen who make profits on the backs of poor farmers. Little by little, the farms -- and the hopes -- of Mar?a and her neighbors are transformed as good gardens begin to grow.
Katie Smith Milway, winner of the 2009 Massachusetts Best Book for Children Award and 2009 Children's Africana Book Award, for One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, is on a quest to bring world issues to elementary and middle school children. One Hen, set in Ghana introduces kids to microfinance and the power of social entrepreneurship and gave rise to nonprofit One Hen, Inc. (www.oneheninc.org), which offers downloadable resources for educators to teach financial literacy and giving back.
Her 2010 book, The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough, is set in the Honduran hillsides and introduces kids to the concept of food security and how each of us, at any age, can combat global hunger (www.thegoodgarden.org). And her latest book, Mimi's Village and How Basic Health Care Transformed It, set in Kenya, connects kids' actions for global health to results in Africa.
Katie is also a partner in Boston with nonprofit and philanthropy advisor The Bridgespan Group. She serves on the board of World Vision US, has coordinated community development programs in Latin America and Africa for Food for the Hungry International and was a delegate to the 1992 Earth Summit. She has written several adult books on sustainable development, including The Human Farm: A Tale of Changing Lives and Changing Lands (Kumarian Press, 1994), which documented the work of sustainable agriculture pioneer Don Elias Sanchez (role model for The Good Garden's teacher).
Prior to Bridgespan, Katie served as editorial director and founding publisher at Bain & Co. A graduate of Stanford University, The Free University of Brussels and INSEAD, Katie spent a decade working in and around more than a dozen countries in Africa and Latin America on sustainable development projects, including village banking, food security, primary health care, water resourcing and education.
