PERMACULTURE SCHOOL GARDEN AGAINST HUNGER

In the rural area of the district of Mzimba, hunger and malnutrition are widespread. Our partner organisation ASUD works together with 5 primary schools and the families of the school children.

Each school sets up a permaculture garden and grows local vegetables and fruit with high nutritional value. Pigs are kept to provide manure for compost. Fruit trees, maize, soya and bananas are planted in the school grounds and the soil is stabilised through erosion measures. The yields from the school garden provide the children with balanced meals. As a result, they attend school regularly, can concentrate better and improve their performance.

At the same time, each school is a learning centre for organic farming and nutrition science for the whole community. The parents of the school children go there to learn how to fight hunger and malnutrition with locally available means, without chemicals and with little money. Afterwards, they copy the school garden at their homes. The families form permaculture clubs to help each other implement what they have learned. The sale of surpluses improves the economic situation of the families on the one hand and enables the schools to make urgently needed purchases on the other hand. ASUD works together with the district authorities to achieve an overall social benefit from the project. Where it is possible, deep wells are drilled at the schools and in the villages. This greatly facilitates the maintenance of the gardens. The water also serves for drinking, cooking, cleaning and daily hygiene, such as hand washing.

This project is based on a successful pilot project at the primary school in Ng’ongo, which ASUD implemented between 2018 and 2020 with the support of EcoSolidar.