School Garden Initiative
Support this projectDriven by community demand, Aaron Ebner has initiated the construction of greenhouses in schools, a unique tool for sustainable development education! The goal is to raise awareness about nutrition, responsibility and agriculture in schools of the Cusco region thanks to the participation of teachers in this programme.
The AASD provides the materials and expertise for greenhouse construction. In coordination with the school, they develop a curriculum that gets students directly involved in the maintenance and management of their shared school greenhouse. The curriculum is highly participatory and practical with the intention of giving students improved understanding of nutrition, greenhouse cultivation, and a sense of empowerment that comes with responsibility.
Initial Problem
Anemia and malnutrition are especially high in the indigenous, high-altitude communities of the Cusco region. While there have been a few projects focusing on nutrition and fruit and vegetable production at the family level, extremely little has been done to share that knowledge with children who comprise the future of these communities. They saw that there was an opportunity to change the audience of nutrition workshops to directly include the most vulnerable population in terms of malnutrition. They realized that integrating the construction, maintenance and cultivation of greenhouses could provide valuable nutrition directly to students and serve as a tool for teachers on a very practical subject.
The positive impacts that the project has made
Since 2010, they have built 12 school greenhouses in the Cusco region. Teachers and students alike have consistently delighted in the opportunity to learn and grow using the greenhouse. Each greenhouse has a direct impact on the diets of the students who pass through the respective schools. Additionally, students are gaining improved understanding of a healthy diet that they can share at home, especially with relation to cultivation inside of the greenhouse. The schools they have worked with range in student-body size from 20 students to more than 100. They estimate that they have impacted more than 1000 students since they began the project in 2010. Finally, the School Greenhouse Initiative functioned as a jump start for their Family Greenhouse Initiative. It was through their early work with schools that they generated interest in family greenhouse production. The students brought home their excitement and new knowledge to their parents who often directly reached out to us, and the municipalities took note of the success in the schools and negotiated future projects with the AASD.
The impacted areas and population
They currently work directly with 10 indigenous communities in the province of Calca, Cusco in the Andes of Southern Peru. In these communities, systemic and historical marginalization combined with geographic isolation have resulted in levels of poverty far above the national average and low self-perceptions of ability to successfully grow a business (self-efficacy). Though income data in the Andean region is scarce, estimates from the Peruvian Ministry of Economy and Finance in 2009 showed that 97.8% of households in the Lares District (where 8 of the 10 communities that they work with are located) are considered impoverished, while 89.2% of those households experience extreme poverty. Farming in the area is largely for sustenance but what little income is generated is made through farm activities. The region itself is characterized by tourism and mining but the communities with which they work, rarely participate in these industries.
The obstacles and challenges
The primary challenge they faced was consistent adherence to the proposed agreement with each individual school. Especially in the early stages, they found that some greenhouses were out of use within a few years. This was primarily due to high rates of turnover in the school staff, leaving the responsibility of greenhouse cultivation and curriculum unaccounted for. They were able to solve this by agreeing to build greenhouses with education institutions that showed high levels of commitment and persistence with relation to the greenhouse. To the best of their ability, they were able to create agreements with more permanent members of the school administration, thereby guaranteeing a long-term commitment.
Similar projects
The Widou Thiengoly multi-purpose gardens
Coumba Dady KA is fighting for positive change in Senegal through the creation of polyvalent gardens with fellow women. The garden’s final goal is to ensure food diet diversification and increased financial autonomy thanks to the engagement of these women. It’s inspiring!
The polyvalent gardens are parallel projects to the great green wall project in order to combat desertification. These gardens were set up and are managed in consultation with the women living in the villages across the Great Green Wall. These determined women have formed various Economic Interest Groups. The aim of these gardens is to allow the cultivation of fruits and vegetables throughout the year, to provide food security to different villages across the Great Green Wall.
These gardens should provide enough food for self-consumption as well as enabling villagers to diversify theIR diet. What’s more, they have the possibility to sell their surplus crops at weekly markets. This initiative thus enables the women to achieve a new social and financial autonomy, as well as to develop their expertise in agriculture.
Planeta Océano: protecting the Giant Manta
Kerstin Forsberg is determined in engaging coastal fishermen communities of Peru in protecting the giant manta ! To do so, she created the marine educator’s teacher network as well as participatory research or community-based manta ray ecotourism. Planeta Océano engages coastal communities in marine conservation through research, marine education and sustainable development initiatives. These initiatives include:
1. Participatory research and citizen science: Local volunteers (fishermen, children, youth, among others) actively investigate local ecosystems, fisheries, and marine species, thus supporting local management efforts. Projects have included assessing shark and ray fisheries, pioneering manta ray conservation in Peru, assessing Traditional Ecological Knowledge on critically endangered sawfish, and supporting Marine Protected Areas.
2. Marine education: Incorporating and institutionalizing marine education and Ocean Literacy. Projects have included setting up Peru’s “Marine Educators Teacher Network” with over 50 schools, leading incubators for youth-lead environmental initiatives, game-based education and their Connecting Schools program, which aims to bring together students across borders through online technology and community engagement.
3. Sustainable development: Fostering environmental entrepreneurship and market-based approaches that contribute to marine conservation and socio-economic development. For example, pioneering community-based manta ray ecotourism in Peru as an alternate livelihood for low-income fishermen and local artisans.
Ultimately, these multidisciplinary and participatory efforts serve as a platform to connect multiple sectors in marine conservation, thus bringing together government, academia, youth, children, local fishermen, and many others.
Sustainable Cupuaçu in the Amazon
The Sustainable Cupuaçu in the Amazon project, the result of a partnership established between the Klorane Botanical Foundation (KBF), L’Institut de Recherche Pierre Fabre (IRPF) and Beraca Institute for the Valorization of Sociobiodiversity (IB), was born with the intention of providing farmers and quilombola extractivists a new economic opportunity through the production of cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum), a native species to the Amazon, through the Agroforestry System (SAF).
The project was conceived from KBF’s three missions: to protect; to explore; to educate. These missions were the guiding elements for the construction of the project’s objective and action areas, which have the following propositions:
PROTECT – Main element of the project that aims to protect the Amazon biome from the restoration of degraded areas through the implementation of agroforestry systems (SAF) in Bela Aurora Community. The project foresaw the planting of 3,000 feet of cupuaçu (in addition to other Integrated species) in the expectation of a production of around 6 tons of seeds in 3-4 years. The strategy adopted to achieve this objective is to transfer technology between family farmers in the community of Bela Aurora and the community of Santa Luzia, in Tomé Açu, which has a history of production in SAFs.
EXPLORE – The pillar aims to systematize and disseminate knowledge from the project’s learning and results, through scientific publications, congresses, etc.
EDUCATE – Consists on conducting workshops with children and young people from the Bela Aurora community, seeking to reinforce the element of environmental education in SAF cultures. This formal moment aims to help develop a more theoretical and critical perception of reality, focusing on the role of human beings in nature, the dynamics of trees in the forest and the importance of preserving biodiversity to maintain the balance of the biome. Within the initiatives aimed at implementing the SAFs, Six training workshops were planned, which involve activities to raise awareness of the importance of restoring degraded areas, preserving the environment and agro-ecological production with family farmers in Bela Aurora.
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