“Feed My Community”

Phiona Mukisa Praise, a Teach For Uganda Fellow, shares how she and her students started a gardening project to provide food and generate income for the students and their families during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Millions of children across the world go to school on an empty stomach every day. And there are millions of children, especially girls, who miss out on school because their families need them to help in the fields. The effect is enormous. Hunger affects children’s concentration and ability to learn.

I have been privileged enough to work with underprivileged children in rural-poor communities. I have witnessed, first hand, how disadvantaged children from poor families survive.

During the lockdown, I stayed in my placement remote community in Mayuge District. I did not want to join others in lamenting about the situation at hand but rather stand out and solve a few challenges within my reach.

After a few months here, I identified an impact-gap of feeding. Families are very poor to afford a decent meal. If there is a meal, then no sauce in sight.

My learners and I started a project to enable us help the community at the height of COVID19 pandemic which was characterized by tough measures and full lockdowns -- affecting activities that would potentially generate some income for the families. And as we all know; food is one of the basic necessities of life. I took a step and began pilot gardens to teach my students backyard gardening in a very profitable way.

We started by growing vegetables to help families make sauce for their meals; most families were having posho and a glass water as a daily meal. We used old bottles, sacks, cutout old jerrycans sample gardens just outside my residence -- which is about 50metres away from the school.

Despite the dry season, we were able to take care of our plants and watered them daily. There was progress and, in a few weeks, some homes were able to get some vegetables they could eat together with their food.

With more harvests in the month of August, we were able to supply enough vegetables to my students' families. We made nursery beds of vegetables and supplied seedlings to my students’ families so that they can grow and become self-sufficient.

This project is vital for my students and the community. Hungry children are at a higher risk of poor school performance, decreased school attendance or even academic achievement hence widening the gap of education inequality.

For long, school and home gardening are a potential solution for sustainable food provision in rural UPE schools, yet it hasn't been widely explored.

There is need for integration of productive agricultural skills at the primary level to systematically strengthen innovative capacity and knowledge generation to bridge the impact-gap in high-in-need rural communities

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phionamukisa.1@gmail.com

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