Home – Introduction
Isipho (ih-SEE-poh) is a nonprofit organization that was co-founded by me, Miranda Lynch, and my father Tom Lynch, to improve the lives of the villagers of iNzinga, South Africa.
Miranda holding Amahle
We first visited the very remote village of iNzinga during the volunteer part of our 2008 vacation. My father and I stayed with a family in the village and tried to live the most real experience possible. I was moved by the extreme poverty, malnutrition, and lack of educational opportunities for kids my age. I was equally moved by the strength and warmth of the people facing these daily challenges. I was 13 at the time and wanted desperately to make a difference.
When we left iNzinga, I vowed to do everything that I could to change that inequality; to do everything possible to give the people of iNzinga, whom we had grown to know and love, the basic opportunities that every person deserves.
By working in schools and gardens that week we realized that sustainable vegetable gardens can help overcome the three main causes of chronic poverty; malnutrition, disease (exacerbated by malnutrition), and poor education (excess vegetables can be sold for school materials).
Isipho provides the training and the tools needed so that villagers in iNzinga can begin to grow their own vegetables, reducing the stunting, birth defects, learning disabilities and illnesses brought on by severe and chronic malnutrition. Isipho also supports the schools in iNzinga with materials and teacher training, so that literacy, school attendance and graduation rates improve.
Our main goal is to create a self-sustaining system in which we can apply our programs in one village, and in five years replicate the system in another village knowing that the system in the first village will continue.
Learn more about our programs and results.