On Friday, October 12th, 2018 Junior Achievement Dominica, Youth Development Division- 4-H Program, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and many more partners launched the long-awaited GROW PROJECT at the Newtown Primary School.
The day comprised of an awareness walk from the Newtown Savannah, locally grown food exhibition, chorale speech presentations, a tour of the garden and hands-on activities and demonstrations of planting on the site with the children.
The Grow Project was launched along with the World Food Day Committee to kick start the official World Food Day which is carded for October 16th, 2018. This year’s World Food Day is under the theme “Our actions are our future. A #zero hunger World by 2030 is possible”.
It was indeed fitting that this Grow Project, a strategy developed by the Junior Achievement Program with continuous support from the Youth Development Division (YDD) – 4-H Program officially launched at this time. We have been working tirelessly on this Grow Project since March 2018 with the other invited partners who collaborated with us.
When this project is implemented it will allow schools to incorporate a garden into their school curriculum and allow them to get plenty of help from technical volunteers to kick-start their School Garden Club. Thus encouraging students and their parents to invest in backyard gardens at home as well.
Food security for the island of Dominica is a very important concern especially after Hurricane Maria devastated our local food market. As an island focused on resilience, sustainability and climate awareness it is a fact that we have to accept that going back to the basics of planting one’s own food and having access to home has grown local foods is one of the best resiliency approaches to building back after disasters.
With support from you both here and abroad, we will have lots more in store for Dominica from our GROW PROJECT as we continue to establish more green spaces!!!
Do enjoy a few pictures depicting what took place at the Grow Project Open Day at the Newtown Primary School with other primary and high school students and our invited guests. You can also visit our Junior Achievement Dominica Facebook page- https://www.facebook.com/JADominica/ to view all that has taken place leading up to our open day.
And let’s hope that what is being taught is organically inclined. The best food that most Dominicans will ever eat will have to be organically grown on their own soil. Let’s hope that the children grow to understand this. They are the future.
Great initiative getting back into agriculture and instilling in the young ones to grow what we eat. The idea however, is nothing new I remember that we had school gardens during my school days. Whatever happened to that? The village of Warner had a thriving school garden where school children were responsible for taking care of it and learning about agriculture. La Plaine had a vibrant agriculture center, where school children would take trips for hands on learning experiences. These things just faded out. Anyway as I said earlier good initiative. Hopefully the whole island will catch on and going back to organic foods that we grew up with.
Grand Bay had a great agricultural center
but the Government put basketball courts there and now they have a housing scheme there
Yes Yes and Yes. We need to promote agriculture in school more. I find that older persons are on the farm and the younger ones lean to the more jacket and tie job. The global phenomena of agriculture as the “poor man’s job” has contributed to this, but now we must go back, rewind and restart.
Great Job on this initiative.