Gundbala Food garden

Gundbala School Garden Report

Objectives:

1)      Conduct a health survey of the village children; see what deficiencies there are and how they can be remedied by nutritional inputs/projects involving the garden.

2)      Work with the teachers to convince them of the need to have a food, pharmacy and flower garden for the children and steer them towards a conservation oriented approach to learning (tough task but we will try!)

3)      Work with the students to create a basic home garden with both food and medicinal plants, since both are linked to nutrition. Create lesson plans that connect the garden with lessons in their text books. Topics will include soil health, planting, seed saving, pest and disease management, harvesting, storage and food hints.

4)      Teach the children nursery techniques through raising forest saplings (they can collect seeds from the surrounding forest.) Since fish and other animals are hunted from the forests and rivers, and provide a huge protein input to the community, it is important to also foster this link to forest ecosystem health.

5)      The programme will have a ripple effect on the 30 women of the immediate surroundings who are part of a couple of self-help groups and with whom Gundbala Welfare and Educational Trust has regular engagement. It will also extend to the 32 local men working in the village cashew resin factory.

6)      Begin evolving a localized full fledged conservation education strategy and curriculum for the school through this effort. Forest gardening depends on a healthy forest. It will be especially interesting to take the children for bird watching sessions, explore water issues through the nearby river, and become aware of the many local environmental problems and solutions. We hope that this initiative can be the precursor to a larger programme that we could take on as a follow-up.

Study Area:

Gundbala is a tiny village of 610 people nestled in the foot hills of Karnataka’s Western Ghats in India. It is on the banks of the river Gangavalli that flows into the Arabian Sea, having originated in the upper reaches of the ghats. The community here is mixed – Kari Vokkals, Havyak Brahmins, Halliki Vokkals and others. The primary occupation is agriculture and collection of non-timber forest products from the forests. You don’t see abject poverty here like you do in other parts of India, but people do lead frugal lives. Some communities have been highly marginalized for generations. There is one school in the village up to grade VII.

Target Audience:

The village school children and the local community, through the children.

Accomplishments Thus Far:

·         Garden land cleared and gardening started. The garden site before much work (left, July 2010) and recently ( right, 20 November 2010):

 

·         Classroom sessions, both lectures and audiovisual presentations. Teaching a planting song:

  ·  Tools purchased; the children and a local farmer who works at the cashew resin factory (paid on an hourly basis so he does not miss wages) are now ready to work in the garden. They make rows for planting, in which they have planted jasmine, roses and lily bulbs as well as local vegetables. (August 2010.)

 

·         Vegetables—okra, bottle gourds, bitter gourds and ash gourds—grew voraciously (September 2010.)

In addition to weekly gardening sessions, the following activities were conducted:

·         An audio-visual session about snakes was held in the hope that the children would learn that snakes can be dealt with in a way other than killing. October brings a two-week vacation; the students agreed to come as often as necessary to care for the garden, and this was planned. They have been collecting manure for the garden on their own.

·         Work with the local village women’s self-help group (SHG) was also conducted. Many of these women have children at the school. A meeting about the dangers of pesticide use was held. The women agreed that growing their own vegetables would not only provide them with vital supplements but also help them save money. Women whose children went to school said they would encourage them to grow a kitchen garden at home. This integration of home and school lessons is especially important.

·         During the vacation, the students came to school for: sessions on using microscopes to look at plants, a classroom session on birds and observational skills, and a bird watching trip. They also came to provide the vines in the garden with proper support. Very sadly, grazing cows lifted the barbed wire fencing with their horns and ate a lot of the vegetables. The fencing was reinforced with locally sourced poles, but it has become apparent that a stronger fence, perhaps a bio-fence of agave plants, will be necessary. (Cow damage, October 2010.)

·         A dentist visited the school and examined the children (tooth decay is a rampant problem,
 as children tend to eat a lot of sugar.) The local rotary club donated pens, notebooks, toothbrushes and toothpaste. The gourds that the cows spared are well into fruiting. (November 2010.)

 

·         Children from the JC English Medium School visited and performed two short skits, one about the many benefits of trees and one very entertaining one about the environmental threats of plastic. Left, the village school children watching the play; right, the Plastic Demon kills animals, villagers and tourists alike. In addition, the school cooks made sambar from one of the gourds the children grew! (November 2010.)

        

·         Pickle was made of the bitter gourds the children grew, to be eaten with their lunch at school. Cloth bags were also given to the students who come to school outside of school hours to care for the garden. (November 2010.)

                                  

·         It should also be noted that my work includes a lot of work outside school. For instance, to have a garden, the school must have a well for water, and it currently does not. Although there may be government money for a well at a school, the work of securing permits falls to me. The same goes for arranging for the land to be surveyed, so that the school’s boundaries are clear and a fence can be built to resist marauding cattle. These tasks require arduous travel and a lot of waiting in government offices!

·         Final Notes: The reception of the school garden by students, teachers and community members alike has been wonderful. The students will come to school on a Sunday to make beds and to plant; one student even brought chili saplings for the garden. The teachers are willing to accommodate garden lessons during school hours, attend audiovisual presentations, and offer food and tea to any guests (dentist, other school groups, etc.) Community members have donated time, seeds and manure to the school garden, even bringing the manure themselves. This garden is becoming a great way for community members to show interest and investment in their children’s education!

A second round of planting and sowing was done on 21st Nov.