Seeds and Support for School Gardens Worldwide

School gardens not only promote food literacy to our youth, but can supplement schools’ lunch programs with full-spectrum vitamins and minerals for growing brains and bodies. Even more, they can be a pillar of connection and community–a place to build self-confidence, get to know peers, and interact with the natural world. 

At Seed Programs International, school garden programs are a pillar of our work. After all, kids that go to school eat one third to one half of all of their meals at school. By centralizing one facet of our garden outreach through the vectors of school systems, we build impact regarding health indicators for school-aged children in the communities we serve. 

Today, we have updates from one of our school garden projects in Peña Blanda, Honduras, in collaboration with Food For The Poor (FFTP) and local partner CEPUDO. Here, we’re building a large greenhouse at the Centro de Vida Infantil, a school and children’s home. This greenhouse will allow for the year-round production of vegetables to support the children’s diets. So far, an agricultural engineer has visited the site to conduct extensive trainings around greenhouse construction, management, seed sprouting, and transplanting into the garden. Following trainings, the school children, teachers, and staff prepped the land and built the mega tunnel greenhouse structure in preparation for vegetable production.

Today, they have just finished preparing soil beds, and will shortly begin seed germination to allow for vegetable growing. 

The students are thrilled to be a part of the project, rather than just recipients of it. They have been critical in every step of the process, and they can’t wait to get their hands dirty with seed germination, seedling transplanting, and growing and harvesting their own vegetables!

Please enjoy these photos of the proejct in action, and stay tuned: I’m sure the next time we update you the students will have large eggplants and tomatoes in their hands!