Planting and Growing! – School garden and inclusive education for Nakalama Primary School, Uganda

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Gardening helps disadvantaged children to find new paths in life

In this project, pupils in great need are building a school garden in the primary school in the community of Nakalama in Uganda. They experience how to create beds, sow vegetables and plant and care for young fruit trees. The children will also learn how to provide themselves with healthy food, and education on healthy eating will be part of the project. In addition, the pupils will be playfully familiarised with how to develop their own business idea and encouraged to pursue their ideas – and to walk their own way and build something of their own despite the hurdles they face in their everyday lives. The project is aimed at those children most affected by poverty and hardship in the community of Nakalama in Uganda, in particular girls from marginalised families and children and young people with disabilities.

All educational programmes are being developed together with the school, and the teachers are trained to continue them in the long term. Furthermore, the school garden will be maintained as a permanent part of the school’s educational programme.

Stiftung WissenWecken has shaped this project together with the local partner organisation Kasale Foundation Uganda and is implementing it together with them. Kasale Foundation Uganda is a registered non-profit organisation founded by the local community of Nakavule. Their aim is to create access to quality education for children living in particular poverty or with disabilities, and to help more young people in Uganda look confidently towards a future that they can shape themselves.

We would like to thank our sponsors:

  • The Berlin Counsil of Children for a Better Wolrd (CHILDREN Kinderbeirat Berlin)
  • Nikolaus-Gormsen-Stiftung

This project contributes in particular to the following Sustainable Development Goals:

The project is aimed at achieving the following impact:

  • Firstly, the pupils learn about “healthy eating”, e.g., which fruit and vegetables contain important substances for their bodies. In the long term, the project aims to improve the nutritional and general health situation of previously disadvantaged young people.

  • Secondly, the participating children learn how to grow their own fruit and vegetables and how to market their produce, and in this way to become self-sufficient economically. In the long term, they should not only be healthier physically but also mentally, happier and more confident.

  • Thirdly, the project will help the families of the participating children by teaching them how to produce their own seeds and grow fruit and vegetables in their family garden. Families in the region usually have a garden, but their knowledge of how to use the garden for their own cooking varies. The project enables families to improve their home cultivation of fruit and vegetable. This enables them not only to live more healthily, but also to save money, and in the best-case scenario they can even sell part of the harvest.

  • Finally, this project aims at promoting a type of agriculture that positively acts upon the environment. In the school garden,  students are practising methods of growing fruits and vegetables which protect the soil and are based on agroecological principles. They are gaining an awareness of the effects of agriculture on the environment and will learn how to shape them in a sustainable way.