Vegetables go to School: Improving Nutrition by Agricultural Diversification

Short description

Our goal is to improve food security in schools by establishing gardens. The idea emphasizes the application of bio-intensive gardening and other regenerative agricultural technologies. Participants are taught seed retention, composting, container gardening, and other technologies.


The problem we aim to solve

Successful school garden projects not only target pupils, but also school administrators, teachers, and parents, and aim to achieve educational objectives, such as giving a better understanding of biological processes, sustainable agricultural practices and environmental management; nutritional objectives, such as providing better information about healthy food choices and encouraging intake of diversified diets; and economic objectives by providing nutritious food for the school canteen, thus lowering costs for buying food. Further, school garden programs can have multiplier effects by encouraging the establishment of vegetable gardens at the homes of pupils.


Our solution

Crops will be identified according to the following criteria. They should be locally and socio-culturally acceptable, nutrient-dense and complement each other in terms of nutritional requirements, resistant/tolerant to prevalent biotic and abiotic stresses, preferably open-pollinated to allow local seed production, relatively easy to grow in confined spaces with a short growing period from sowing to harvest, and they should belong to a maximum of botanical families to allow crop rotation to reduce build-up of pest pressure.

The school garden program will be linked with other school‐based health, nutrition, sanitation and environmental initiatives with close participation of national partners and local communities. This project targets schools as an entry point since they offer an ideal setting to familiarize children with health‐promoting values and habits.

At the end of the project, school vegetable gardens with fruit and vegetable-based school feeding programs, complemented by improved sanitation and environmental conservation, are expected to have been implemented.

School gardens provide food for daily meals at school, the gardens help students and parents learn how to improve their farming techniques to produce higher yields and minimize the impact of drought and deforestation. School gardens also show students that rural life can be fruitful and productive.

School gardens are part of a larger strategy that is built around “empowerment, rather than dependency.”


The innovativeness of our approach

Schools are an ideal setting for teaching basic skills in food, nutrition and health. In many communities, they may be the only place where children acquire these important life skills. Primary schools, in particular, are suitable vehicles for nutrition education since they also target girls, who tend to leave schools earlier. Nutrition lessons will be simple, interesting, colourful and easily learned by demonstration, illustration, example and practical. Good nutrition education helps children to become “nutritionally literate”.

Technologies and Methods

  • Promoting consumption of fruits and green leafy vegetables,
  • Teaching students how to establish and maintain home gardens,
  • Teaching students how to grow food without using pesticides
  • Introducing students to food preparation and storage techniques,
  • Providing nutrition information and encouraging adolescent girls to adopt healthier dietary habits before their first pregnancy
  • Making students interested in agriculture and nutrition as future occupations
  • Providing students with a tool for survival at times of food shortages

Potential Partners

  • National agriculture advisory services
  • World food program
  • Food and Agriculture organisation of united nations
  • The United States Agency for International Development

VOTE FÜR DAS PROJEKT

Das Voting endet am 24. Juni 2018, 23:59 Uhr.

13149
Dankeschön!
Vegetables go to School: Improving Nutrition by Agricultural Diversification

Team: Bumbo Benjamin

Nalubega Assumpta

Tino Christine

Eliot Cherop

Dieser Artikel ist nur in englischer Sprache verfügbar.

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