News from Foundations for Farming
8 November 2011
This month at Harare’s Centre of Excellence has been a busy one. The Greek Orthodox church sent a group of people off the street for Foundations for Farming training. This was an interesting training with people of different capabilities, having some people in wheelchairs, some blind, however they all heard the principles of farming, and can apply them to farming if they have the capabilities, but they can also be applied to lots of other areas of life.
Our new grassroots trainers have been learning how to train and carry out the soil demonstrations, and they, and some of our other staff have also been involved in harvesting our wheat.
Harare’s Centre of Excellence is now the owner of a ‘tractor’! While we discourage ploughing in our teaching methods, we felt that it would be beneficial to be able to plough sections of our research and development plots to show the difference between ploughing and our methods.
Foundations for Farming in Mexico
Miriam Navarro came from Mexico to Foundations for Farming’s International Champions Conference in March this year and has since been trying to pioneer Foundations for Farming in Mexico. She has been involved in translating the Foundations for Farming manual into Spanish, setting up demonstration plots in different communities, and speaking to the leaders of Newfrotiers Mexico at their conference earlier this year. It’s really exciting to see how Miriam has grasped hold of what she learnt in Harare and used it to benefit the communities around her in Mexico. To read more about Miriam’s story over the last few months then click here.
Foundations for Farming in Schools
Foundations for Farming is running a Unicef funded schools programme.
The purpose of the programme is to teach children nutrition, using vegetable gardens that they will help to plant at their schools, along side that, they will also plant a Well Watered Garden (a 6m x 6m plot of maize planted using Foundations for Farming’s techniques) and will therefore learn how to farm sustainably. 55 Schools were in the programme during 2010-2011, and another 100 schools have been added this year after the initial success in the 55. Two teachers from each school have been trained by Foundations for Farming, and they in turn will teach their children during the academic year.
One such teacher was Mrs Ndebele, a 68 year old teacher at Mukwasha Primary School in Chegutu. She and her husband also run a small scale commercial farm in the Musengezi area. After attending the first Foundations for Farming workshop under the schools project in November 2010, she was fired up to share and implement what she had learnt not only with her school but also with her husband. Read about her story here.
Foundations for Farming in South Africa
Boet and Celia Pretorius have been on the road in South Africa for the past two months, taking Foundations for Farming far and wide across the nation. They are such a faithful couple, sacrificing so much to travel so widely and take Foundations for Farming to the deepest depths of South Africa. If you’re in South Africa or are interested to see what Beot and Celia have been doing for the past few months, then please click here to see if they are working in an area near you. You should also find their contact details there, should you wish to contact them to get involved with what they are doing in an area near you.