#TuesdayTales | School Gardens: A Path to Ending School Hunger
By Namagambe Zaharah
Welcome back to #TuesdayTales, a series of stories from the field, told firsthand by our Building Tomorrow Fellows. In honor of World Food Day, celebrated on October 16, today’s story recognizes Cohort 6 Fellow Namagambe Zaharah’s efforts to ensure students at St. Peter’s Buronzi Primary School receive school meals. Check out Zaharah’s creative ingenuity on display below!
Studying on an empty stomach is hard. School meals were seldom provided during my time in primary school. I remember staring at the ticking clock, eagerly waiting for the evening bell to ring so I could dash home and eat. This memory has stayed with me over the years, so I promised myself that one day, I would do all I could to ensure other students did not experience hunger at school. That opportunity finally came when I became a Building Tomorrow Cohort 6 Fellow.
I was deployed to Kibaale District in Western Uganda in late February 2021 and was assigned to four different primary school communities, one of which was the St. Peter’s Buronzi Primary School community. In 2021, my fellow Cohort 6 Fellows and I worked tirelessly to deliver foundational literacy and numeracy lessons outdoors and in community spaces, to support learning even while schools were closed. In January 2022, when schools across Uganda finally reopened their doors, I began to see the same food insecurity problems at St. Peter’s that I too had experienced as a primary school student: children were going without a meal during the school day. Noticing there was ample land surrounding the school, I was inspired to create a school garden that could be cultivated to help feed the students.
I proposed my idea to the Headteacher of the school, and he approved. He then organized a meeting with the School Management Committee, where we agreed on the crops to include in the garden, such as beans, groundnuts, maize, and vegetables. We were making such positive strides toward providing critical nourishment for St. Peter’s students, and I could not have been happier.
The students and I prepared the nursery bed for the seedlings and began to brainstorm different ways to keep them growing in the middle of the drought we were experiencing. First, we used a watering can to keep them hydrated. This paid off and the crops began to grow, so we carefully transplanted them to the main garden where their roots could run freely. The plants began to take up more space, so the students filled up several plastic water and soda bottles in addition to the watering can to divide and conquer the task at hand. For a longer-term solution, we drilled tiny holes into the bottoms of these plastic bottles and set them above each plant for a slow, but steady release of water.
I am excited to share that we have begun harvesting all of the crops we planted, so students at St. Peter’s can focus on learning instead of their empty stomachs. I hope other schools around the country follow St. Peter’s Buronzi Primary School’s lead and work to eliminate the hunger barrier that all too often keeps children from completing their education and reaching their full potential.
