From Seed to Shelter (FSTS) is an initiative addressing malnutrition in refugee camps.

While working on a previous project, I had done some research in Vial Refugee Camp, Greece. I learnt from a doctor there that 90% of the patients she treated suffered from diet-related issues. I did some digging into the issue, and learnt that in 2023, only 1.4% of the food distributed by the World Food Program (the world’s largest humanitarian agency) was deemed ‘nutritionally adequate’. These were troubling things to learn - vulnerable communities deserve better access to nutrition.

In June last year, I left my job to start FSTS and respond to this issue. I piloted a microgreens farm outside of Zervou Camp, Greece, in cooperation with the grassroots organisation selfm.aid. Microgreens were promising due to their fast grow-cycle (7-14 days) & nutrient content (5x more nutrient-dense than mature vegetables). Additionally, Zervou Camp was a site where Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had reported cases of malnutrition a few months prior (April 2025).

I wanted to learn 4 things from the pilot: (A) Was this a cost-effective means of supplementing diets? (B) Would the farm survive the intense Greek summer? (C) Would the community take to the food being provided? (D) Would the community be able to manage the farm on their own? If I could demonstrate that microgreens farming passed these ‘tests’, then they might be a solution that could be more widely adopted in other settings where displaced communities have insufficient diet diversity.

On all 4 counts, my evaluation determined that the pilot was a success (find the evaluation report here: https://tinyurl.com/samospilot). I trained 6 refugees to operate the farm productively, supplementing over 2000 plates in 2 months, with only 5m^2 of floorspace. I estimated the solution is about 50% more cost-effective than a cash transfer. The pilot has concluded but the farm continues to operate through the community groups on the island.