The 2012 RUFORUM Biennial Conference is the third in the series. The main objective of the Biennial conferences is to provide a platform for agricultural research for development stakeholders in Africa and beyond to actively exchange findings and experiences, while at the same time learning lessons towards improving performance of the agricultural sector and ultimately people’s livelihoods. The biennial conference is RUFORUM’s most comprehensive meeting for the diversity of stakeholers in agriculture. It is especially dedicated to graduate students and their supervisors, grantees in RUFORUM member universities and alumni. It is a platform for peer review, quality control, mentorship, networking and shared learning. The third Biennial Conference was attended by 657 participants.This record contains an extended abstract accepted under the Cross Cutting theme
The Potential of School Gardening to Mitigate Short-term Hunger among Universal Primary Schools in Kamuli District, Eastern Uganda
Abstract:
This paper reports on a Field Attachment Program Award
(FAPA), an internship undertaken by the first author to report
back to the communities where the MSc thesis research was
done, and come up with ideas to scale up the Masters’ research
outputs. The Masters’ research was on the “Effects of Short-
Term Hunger on Schooling among Universal Primary Schools
in Kamuli and Soroti Districts”. The research established that
59% of the pupils go without food and therefore drop out of
school because of hunger. Following the establishment of school
gardens under this project which was run by the pupils
themselves, the pupils did not only engage themselves in
gardening which supplied food to the school, but school
gardening enhanced their attendance and retention in school,
got them interested in farming, and they begun taking the
information around the villages; they thus became ‘local village
extension agents’. The internship provided opportunity to scale
up the activities that were done in one school to four more
schools, and to the district at large, which is further scaling
them up. This internship was carried out with the Volunteer
Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO), a local nongovernmental
organisation, which is now scaling up and out the
school gardening project.
Cet article rapporte sur l’Intérêt du Programme d’Attachement
sur Terrain (FAPA), un stage effectué par l’auteur pour rendre
compte aux collectivités où la recherche d’un mémoire de
maîtrise a été faite, et trouver des idées pour intensifier les
résultats de la recherche de maîtrise. L’étude de maîtrise était
sur les «Effets de la faim à court terme sur la scolarisation
dans les écoles primaires des districts de Kamuli et Soroti”. La
recherche a établi que 59% des élèves vont sans nourriture et
par conséquent, abandonnent l’école à cause de la faim. Après
la création des jardins scolaires dans ce projet qui a été exécuté
par les élèves eux-mêmes, les élèves ne se sont pas engagésseulement dans le jardinage qui a fourni de la nourriture à l’école,
mais le jardinage scolaire a renforcé leur présence et leur
rétention à l’école, les a aussi intéressés à l’agriculture, et ils
ont commencé à prendre de l’information autour du village ; ils
sont devenus ainsi «des agents locaux de vulgarisation du
village». Le stage a donné l’occasion d’étendre les activités qui
ont été faites dans une école à quatre écoles différentes, et
finalement au district dans son ensemble, qui les élève
davantage. Ce stage a été effectué avec les Efforts de Bénévolat
pour les Questions de Développement (VEDCO), une
organisation locale non-gouvernementale, qui est maintenant à
plus grande échelle et en dehors du projet de jardinage scolaire.
Language:
English
Extended abstracts submitted under the Cross Cutting theme
Date of publication:
2012
Country:
Region Focus:
East Africa
Collection:
RUFORUM Conferences and Workshops
Agris Subject Categories:
Agrovoc terms:
Additional keywords:
Licence conditions:
Open Access
Access restriction:
Form:
Printed resource
Publisher:
Notes:
