Our 2005 Project: school vegetable gardens - Indonesia

Our partnership with Plan began in June 2005 with our support of school vegetable gardens in Bima, Indonesia.

The project aimed to teach 5,000 pupils in ten schools in Madapangga, Bima, how to plant, nurture and cultivate organically grown fruit and vegetables, in order to provide them with nutritious food and teach them how to respect and protect the environment. All these new skills and knowledge can then be shared and practiced with their families and communities.

Each school had eight groups of children made up of representative from the third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade of primary school. These groups were divided again into several smaller teams of between five to eight children. Each of these smaller groups were given one type of vegetable to cultivate, for example; spinach, longbean or kangkung (a type of local spinach).

Besides vegetables, each school also planted at least ten varieties of hardy fruit plants including, mango, jackfruit and rambutan (a fruit that is very common in Southeast Asia - from the same family as a lychee).

Regular meetings took place between the teachers and the children to monitor the progress of the vegetable gardens. The children helped to run the meetings by performing simple administrative tasks. Through this forum, the children were able to share what they had learnt through working the gardens and discuss some of the problems they encountered. The children's parents also participated and contributed materials like bamboo and wood, so fences could be built around the gardens.

There were some hiccups:

- The really damp and humid conditions where some of the schools are based resulted in poor crops.

- Not all the schools have a wide enough piece of land available to them.

- During the planting season on their farms, parents find it difficult to be involved in the school activities.

- The lack of accessto water caused problems.

But overall our funding has enabled Plan to establish a sustainable project. The children have been very keen to use their new experience and knowledge to create their own gardens at home. They've shared their understanding with their parents and neighbours and many households are planting similar gardens with practical support from the teachers.

The schools are also committed to sustaining gardening activities, even without funding support and their gardens will remain well into the future; maintaining the gardens as a learning resource for the children.

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