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.”