Why the Africa Green School Garden Project?

Everyday, 20,000 children die from starvation related causes in the third world. That is five 9/11?s each and every day. They key to unlocking the potential for society’s progress is to provide youth with learning and development experiences that reinforce necessary values and personal growth in addition to practical skills and knowledge.

Studying isn’t enough; practical experience should come right along with it. In the same way, action and experience is important but isn’t everything, you travel a better way if you continuously build your scope of knowledge and keep your mind sharp. We need to create a pathway for the next generation of young to realise their potential and make a positive contribution to the economy and society. The young people are the generation that can End Poverty.

Children that go to school hungry cannot learn well. They have decreased physical activities, diminished, cognitive abilities, and reduced resistance to infection. Their school performance is often poor and may drop out of school early. In the long term, chronic malnutrition decreases individual potential and has adverse effects on productivity, incomes and national development. This shows a country’s future hinges on its children and youth.

Aside this, It is no news that a lot of attention has gone to agriculture by developing nations as they recognize that it a sustainable means of bringing relief to it citizens. Agriculture not only provides food but also provides revenue for the nation. However, there is a dwindling of the farmers that produce food. This is majorly due to the fact that they are getting older and thus it becomes impossible to get the needed food and other related produce.

As a result, attention has turned to the youth as the future of agriculture, unfortunately though lot of youth have little or no interest as they see agriculture as a tedious and unrewarding venture. The need for food despite all these keeps increasing, it is thus important to boost the interest of children in agriculture from an early start.

60% of youth are unemployed and most of them underemployed. We need urgent action. One of the bigger concerns of governance in present times is the productive employment of youth.

In times such as these, it is imperative to ensure that the youth of the country are optimally employed. While they are the most potent demographically, they are also the most vulnerable section of the population

Food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Originated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this is the most commonly accepted definition of food security. It can be applied on any scale, from a single household to the global population. In its least serious degree, food insecurity indicates only the risk of hunger, not necessarily its presence.

Famine is the most extreme state of food insecurity. It exists where a series of hunger indicators, including mortality, cross critical thresholds set by the UN. Adequate food availability at the national, regional and household levels, obtained through markets and other channels, is the cornerstone of nutritional well-being. At the household level, food security implies physical and economic access to foods that are adequate in terms of quantity, nutritional quality, safety and cultural acceptability to meet each person’s needs.

Household food security depends on an adequate income and assets, including land and other productive resources owned. Food security is ultimately associated with access to nutritionally adequate food at household level, i.e. the ability of households or individuals to acquire a nutritionally adequate diet at all times. The normative dimensions of household food security, defining household food security in ideal terms.

 Supporting agricultural education and  vocational training opportunities for young people is crucial for the development of skills needed for gainful employment in rural areas.

However, traditional teaching methods that still prevail in many technical and vocational training programmes do not provide the required innovative and practical agricultural skills set young farmers need in agriculture. The revision of rural vocational and technical education curricula should be seen as an urgent priority in rural areas.

Another key area for investment is higher education—not just for the agricultural sciences, but for training in business, marketing, finance, policymaking and engineering, to create new generations of professionals who can build Africa’s agro-industrial capacity. There should be a strong focus on preparing an employable youth.

The Sustainable Food Security through Green School Garden project (Africa GSG-Project) prepares students to become leaders and citizens who understand how the natural world works, see the patterns that connect human activity to nature, and have the knowledge, values, and skills to act effectively on that understanding.

How we grow, process, transport, market, prepare and dispose of food is critical to central sustainability issues, including resources, energy, population and water and soil conservation. Food serves as an ideal entry point for understanding the connections between such issues as hunger, trade-policy, workers’ and children’s, energy use and climate change.

The school directly affects student health and ultimately, public health and long-term community sustainability, while teaching students about nutrition. Through their purchasing, schools help local agriculture. Gardens create opportunities to experience basic ecological literacy concepts first hand- The flow of energy from the sun to plants and animals, planetary circles of water and weather, the web of relations embodied in every bite. They help students learn where the food they eat comes from and how it gets to them.

The global trend is that we will be more and more dependent on efficient and sustainable agriculture; fewer and fewer people want to deal with it.  Agriculture no longer attracts young farmers, students or researchers. But with the programmes, this can be changed.

The Food Security through Africa Green School Garden Project (Africa GSG- Project)  prepares students to become leaders and citizens who understand how the natural world works, see the patterns that connect human activity to nature, and have the knowledge, values, and skills to act effectively on that understanding.

The Africa GSG -project is to address food insecurity in Africa and to rebuild community structures by concentrating in  schools at the centre of communities. In each school, a project team and community steering committee will be trained to work with children to establish a school garden, with access to tools, seeds and cuttings. By working together, pupils and community learn valuable skills which will enable them to be more self-reliant and improve their livelihood.