Bwindi, Uganda Garden to School House Table ~ foundation for ecology

The Foundation for Ecology and Educate Bwindi (both 501c3 non-profits) are partnering to bring a new schoolyard garden to the Bwindi Watoto School, in Bwindi, Uganda. This project is a combined effort of the school’s Ecology Club and Agricultural Club with the combined goals of providing fresh food for the students, teaching best agricultural methods for use in the region and providing nutritional education.

The Bwindi Watoto School is focused on helping the most vulnerable children in the community. Rural Ugandan families depend on family gardens to feed their families, but use the same traditional methods and grow the same crops that their great grandparents did. Some of what they raise has little nutritional value. There is little education regarding modern agricultural techniques, and no understanding of the adaptations required by advancing Climate Change. By creating a large vegetable garden on school grounds, the children will learn modern cultivation methods and will be introduced to new crops. They will bring their acquired knowledge home to their villages, elevating the production of home gardens in the region over time.

As the first phase of this project, raised beds will be developed next to the school classrooms. This will help keep the crops safe and accessible to the students, who will participate in sowing, nurturing, harvesting and enjoying the produce. Next spring, a piece of land will be sought nearby to plant a larger crop, attended to by an enthusiastic group of first to seventh graders.

This is a one year project, with a total goal of $20,000. We can start the project with a donation of $5,000.

Students filling sack to prepare for planting.

Watering collard greens, soon to be harvested.

Planting area prepared for banana seeds.

About Educate Bwindi

Educate Bwindi is an all-volunteer, 501c3 non-profit dedicated to educating the most vulnerable children of Bwindi, Uganda. Together with our Ugandan partner, Educate Bwindi Uganda, we own and operate the Bwindi Watoto School, a private school serving the most vulnerable and the highest performing children in our community. Support for the school comes from sponsorships and donations.

About the time that the first family of gorillas living in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest finished their habituation to humans in order to open up trekking for tourism, the idea of a primary school in the area was beginning to turn into a reality.

A few years later, the Bwindi Watoto School opened. Soon after, Educate Bwindi became a 501c3, a crucial part of the school.

Seven years later, we bought the school and starting working hard on improving everything from academics to the school’s food. A huge percentage of the population, including those who are rich, is diabetic – and many die. We have changed what our students eat and when they eat it.

One of the changes that was at first resisted by the school administration was regarding switching from processed grains to those in which the kernel is intact. Brown rice is extremely uncommon and expensive, so we just took white rice completely off the food list. We were told only prisoners in jail eat foods made with the kernel. It took almost two years for the changes to be accepted (and a lot of little articles explaining blood sugar, etc.) We then removed some foods, started purchasing only grains with the precious kernel – and, to everyone’s surprise, no one even noticed that they were eating corn mash and morning porridge that still included the kernel.

This is only one change that we believe has been instrumental in the health of our almost two hundred children. Bright eyes, healthy skin and just simple beauty describes every, single child.

We continue to focus on better health, better teachers, better foods. At the same time, we established a highly effective non-reader program, introduced critical thinking to the teachers, created an occasional arts and crafts day (when funds permit), look for a way to keep several cows to reduce the cost of milk and increase the amount of milk given daily, and many other programs. One teacher asked if he could start an agricultural/ecology club. Everyone replied, ‘YES”!

The children already learn about agriculture and about the environment as part of the required government curriculum, but the hands-on approach has been very successful! There are probably twenty children in the agricultural/ecology club, from second grade to the last year of primary education (7th grade).

They plant native bushes, trees, and vegetables wherever possible on our property, though funds for these are not as much as we would like. The children are eager to learn how to plant properly, which vegetables need more or less sun, talk about the coming climate change that we already notice in our community.

Many of the children come from extreme poverty. If they are lucky, the family owns some empty land near their home, and the women plant those areas with corn, tomatoes, and perhaps a cabbage or some black beans. We fear that the kinds of foods people can raise and eat is going to change quite a bit. Already the rainy seasons are sometime too dry and the dry seasons sometimes too wet.

The children come back to school after vacations thinner than when they left.

The government has ranked us #1 in Academics, #1 in Nutrition and #1 in the percentage of students attending school without paying school fees for multiple years – and say no other school in our District is likely to even catch up to us. Our challenge now is to keep up with the high inflation in Uganda, requiring more donations, more sponsorships to keep everything running.

The importance of protecting all the animals and birds in the forest, of controlling how much water rushing down from the mountains is properly used, the need to introduce children to new foods and new problems that must be solved affects every child in our school and in our villages. The aggrecultural/ecology project is ready for it.

About Educate Bwindi

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