A few months after we started the feeding program at the Banawa Elementary School in Cebu, I noticed that the school started growing vegetables in the school yard. It was actually amazing how healthy and prolific the vegetables seemed, particularly since they seemed to make a conscious choice of planting these “above ground” either in recycled plastic containers, plastic bags and most intriguingly, bamboo poles. I am sure this agricultural effort was part of their class lessons on nutrition or afterschool activities, but the offshoot of this program, I was told, was that some of the produce was included in the meals for the feeding program, so the kids grew part of their own meals.
The sign up top translates roughly to “School Vegetable Gardens” and these are just some of the things they had in the school yard. Up top were kang kong or water spinach in hanging halved recycled plastic containers. They explained that the ground was very rocky and had hardly any topsoil so they had taken to planting in containers. Above, a really cool use of large bamboo poles, halved and filled with compost and soil… they used this to sprout seeds and even grown other veggies to maturity.
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