2006 School Garden Service Learning Project
Fifty calories, the equivalent of one apple, is lunch every day at the 700-student Namasagali Primary School as estimated by Eric Nonnecke, ISU senior nutritional science student, during a 2006 pilot service learning project in Uganda. Lunch at most rural schools in Kamuli district, Uganda, is simple corn porridge -- hand-ground corn meal boiled in water -- and is the only meal many students get each day. That makes it hard for these future farmers to learn.
So Eric, along with eight other students and three faculty members from Makerere University and Iowa State University participated in a pilot school garden service learning project funded by private gifts to CSRL and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The Namasagali community and VEDCO staff were important collaborators as well.
Consistent with the mission and goals of CSRL, a key step in preparing for the June 2006 school garden project was planning with the teachers, parents and community leaders in Namasagali. Therefore, in early 2006 representatives from VEDCO, Makerere and CSRL began meeting with the Namasagali community to select garden crops and begin preparing and planting the plot. This project also included funds for two deep wells, so the community began planning for care and maintenance of these important boreholes. Back in the US, ISU students with Dr. Gail Nonnecke, ISU Department of Horticulture, and Dr. Lee Burras, ISU Department of Agronomy, used Spring semester for extensive orientation and planning, including interaction via e-mail with Makerere and VEDCO.
By the time the students and faculty from both universities converged in Namasagali in June, the primary school students had already established vegetable nurseries, two acres of cassava, two acres of maize and a field of soybeans. The students weeded and watered the garden, and their parents formed a garden management committee and provided labor and materials for a fence to keep animals out.
The university students assisted the Namasagali teachers with science, agriculture, human nutrition and health curriculum lessons using the garden and well. That was a challenge, with class sizes of 70 or more and limited materials, but the primary school students were very interested in these visiting instructors. The university students also helped clear and prepare ground, by hand, for a second garden and started a demonstration chicken house and enclosure on the school grounds. The eggs will provide much needed protein for the students' diet.
After this extensive preparation and work, Namasagali Primary School has a new school garden, well and chicken house. The school children will no longer walk many kilometers for drinking and cooking water. Lacking textbooks, they now have an outdoor laboratory for their studies that will also supplement their lunches. The children gained a positive perspective on agriculture as a profession, and will be able to share their gardening experiences and planting materials with their own families.
The Makerere University students Harriet Agemo (ag. extension & education), Dennis Katuramu (horticulture) and Rebecca Wokibula (ag. land use management), along with lecturer Bernard Obaa, Makerere Department of Agriculture Extension and Education, were integral partners in this collaborative project and also learned, among other things, a positive view of agriculture and extension as professions through interactions with the VEDCO staff and ISU participants. It is common for agriculture to be viewed as a last resort career by university students in Uganda, especially for those who do not qualify for medical school. "We felt different after interacting with you," said the Makerere students repeatedly.
ISU students Lee Beck (horticulture), Rachael Cox (agronomy), Melissa Nasers (ag. education & studies/int'l ag.), Eric Nonnecke (nutritional science), Elizabeth Sukup (public service administration ag./int'l ag.) and Mark Tekippe (electrical engineering) worked hard and learned a lot too. The challenges of working with limited resources in a different culture were a big lesson, but they also opened up a broader world view. Mark's engineering background gives him lots of experience in problem solving, but he "cannot think of many experiences that required me to adapt to this level before." Living and working with the Makerere students taught the ISU students about the similarities of people everywhere, and also the importance of different views and experiences among team members. All the students are very supportive of future service learning projects through ISU.
