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School Gardens and Agricultural Education to Promote Drought / Climate Change Resiliency
General objective:
The purpose of this project is to implement and further create school-garden focused educational programs at an additional two severely underserved K-12 schools in rural Granada, Nicaragua. This grant will create programs that the teachers and school directors have requested, the national government has promoted and the local Ministry of Education fully support. The programs will also inculcate teachers, gardeners, and small farmers (rural campesinos) in sustainable, ecological, best gardening practices.
This project is a follow-on project to GG 1528669 which is currently being implemented in two other schools in Granada by the Rotary Club of Granada. District 5440 Rotarian Ron Hammel visited the Granada Club in February 2017 to discuss this project and inspected one of the schools where this project will be implemented - Escola La Epifania.
School gardens will grow vegetables which will be used in the improved school kitchens to feed more nutritional meals to students, the excess not fed to students will be sold to restaurants in Granada. The cash from these sales will be used to continue the program. Curriculum developed in the first GG 1528669 will be refined and taught to the teachers in the new schools so that the program will continue into the future without additional Rotary support.
Identified Need:
The Nicaraguan Ministry of Education has declared that all public schools should have educational gardens, and created a program under the Ministry of Education, PROGRAMA INTEGRAL DE NUTRICIONESCOLAR-PINE, which has the creation of school gardens as one of its primary aims. (See http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/009/as518s/as518s.pdf for a review of the conference held on the topic) The intention to implement these programs has been set, but the implementation has not been forthcoming, largely due to a lack of funds at the local school level.
Our programs objectives parallel the stated goal and objectives of the Ministry of Education's School Gardens program:
Goals:
• Develop students' cognitive abilities while improving their dietary diversity, food and nutrition behaviors and those of their families, based on the motto, " Learning by Doing."
• Strengthen the organization of the school community as a basis for the operation and
sustainability of the School Garden.
• Strengthen the technical capacity of the educational community to manage and
produce the school gardens on agro-ecological approach. (Note: "agro-ecological" is the Nicaraguan term for sustainable agriculture.)
• Improving eating habits and hygiene practices of children, teachers, parents
and mothers participating in the primary school and / or preschool.
• Promote life skills through participatory methods in Education, Nutrition, Health, Food Production and the protection of the Environment, empowering students in the face of the
Nutritional risks and Food Insecurity , and informing the attitudes of children regarding
agriculture and care of natural resources.
Specific Objectives:
1. Strengthen and consolidate the school garden project with primary and secondary students and their teachers in year 1 schools Jose de la Cruz Mena and Mercedes Mondragon (GG 1528669). This implies reviewing/improving the curriculum (series of learning workshops), increasing student learning outcomes and strengthening the school gardens committees to increase buy-in and sustainability.
2. Expand the school garden initiative to two new schools: La Epifania and Juan Diego.
3. Strengthen and consolidate the training program of the Centro de Agricultura Sostenible (CAS) for the benefit local farmers of El Mamon and neighboring communities.*
4. Develop and implement strategy to improve nutritional habits. Provide healthy cooking classes for the parents that provide government supported meals to students. Move the location for school meal production from the participating parents' homes to the kitchens at the schools. Expand curriculum developed in year 1 to include additional nutritional programming.
The timeline for this grant is January 2018 through December 2018.
Sixty percent of the funding from this grant will be used to pay contract labor to complete the school gardening curriculum, train the teachers, construct the new gardens at the two new schools as well as provide for consultants for an evaluation of the program. Twenty percent of the funding will be used for construction of teaching pavilions, fencing around the garden plots, improvements in the kitchens and construction of bee hives. The final twenty percent will be used for basic tools, compost, soil, plants, seeds and teaching materials.
Granada Rotarians will provide a section of land and a workshop with basic kitchen and storage facilities. One club member will help with the healthy cooking classes, other members will be involved during the construction and curriculum development.
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