GARDENS & ACTIONS
The School Gardens project allows students to develop practical workshops on gardening and experience the work first-hand. Their participation in the project provides an important outlet for the generation of knowledge, for organization and for community engagement.
The proposal of the NGO Cidades sem Fome (Cities Without Hunger) in this project is to transform the entirety of school spaces into pedagogical spaces.
It is our understanding that, in this way, such activities will contribute to the confronting of problems identified in the communities where the students live, turning them into agents of transformation and of intervention in preserving and defending the environment, as well as cultural and historical assets.
HEALTHY CULTURE
School Gardens
Most Brazilian cities have a significant number of schools with large physical spaces without specific use, which represents a liability for both the administrators and the teachers. Our project aims to use these already existing spaces in an effective way, appropriating them for food production and thereby providing an interface between students, teachers and communities around educational
centers, whilst also aiming to allow for the production of food for families in need and helping young people build environmental ties.
When integrated into the school environment, the vegetable garden serves as a living laboratory that enables the development of various pedagogical activities in environmental and nutrition education, combining theory and practice in a contextualized way and assisting in the teaching and learning process while also strengthening relationships through the advancement of collective and cooperative work.
The environmental question is one of the greatest concerns of modern society, therefore triggering a range of initiatives which aim to reverse the current harmful effects on life on Earth.
One of these initiatives is Environmental Education, which different institutions of primary education are trying to implement, in the pursuit of educating informed citizens committed to the major concerns of society. Besides this, the fast urban development in cities, which replaces green spaces with concrete, reduces children's direct contact with all the biotic elements of the natural environment of which they are an integral part.
Within this paradigm, children have increasingly restricted spaces in which to experience the natural enjoyment of being in contact with the elements of the environment of which they are a part of.
In primary education, environmental awareness activities in schools are embedded in several crossed themes, mainly environment, health and consumption, so that they permeate the entire educational practice and, at the same time, generate a comprehensive view
of the environmental problem, in which both its physical and social-historical aspects are considered.
​
It is extremely important to highlight the concern shown by most teachers in teaching environmental education in schools, for this concern becomes a favorable point for the implementation of new ideas
and proposals in this area.
Nowadays in Brazil, poor nutrition is not a problem exclusive to either the poor or the rich, but people from all social classes eat poorly. Problems arising from inadequate nutrition, such as malnutrition, anemia, obesity and non-transmissible chronic diseases, affect children, youth and adults alike.
That is why nutrition education from an early age is paramount. Food choices are learned experiences. Familiarity with food is a preponderant factor for its acceptance and, from then on, kids learn to like what is available. In this way, the school is undoubtedly the best agent to promote nutrition education, since it is during childhood and adolescence that eating habits are established, which are then difficult to change in adulthood.
The purpose of nutrition education is to transform food into a pedagogical tool, transposing the limits of the act of eating by making it a starting point for new discoveries. It is during childhood that the act of eating can be widely explored, for it is at this stage that curiosity is sharp, prejudices have not yet been formed, and the possibility of developing a broader critical sense arises.
For this reason, school gardens play an important role in the development of good eating habits in children, as it familiarizes them with food.
JOB GENERATION
Urban
Gardens
Our proposal is innovative in its approach by reclaiming and giving social and economic purpose to available and unused spaces in our city.
The innovation lies in giving new meaning to the well-known community gardens, which were mostly built on an ideological, socialization, or occupational
therapy model. By using them as a tool, the project creates income generation opportunities for socially vulnerable people.
It transforms an incipient and partially dormant process into a "Social Business", leveraging local potentialities and existing social demands in our city. Moreover, it gives meaning and purpose to a large number of spaces with no defined use, which allow room for at-risk housing settlements, environmental destruction, breeding
grounds for dengue mosquitoes and the emergence of violence.
Our strategy involves a strong network of partnerships that, by acting together, create expressive results in the proposed generation of jobs and income, as well as in the nutritional improvement of those involved.
This innovative approach to creating "urban social businesses" leverages various local resources that were being wasted before, which hindered the development of social inclusion strategies in many communities.
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Family
Farming
The Community Gardens project, which produced significant results in the urban area of ​São Paulo, was adapted and replicated to the rural area of ​​the small town of Agudo, in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state. This small town, which had invested on the cultivation of tobacco since the eighties, is currently battling the problems that have emerged from this mono culture.
We also want to support these producers in accessing credit and markets and also transforming their actions and production practices into knowledge and value.
Our goal is to introduce differentiated production models, promote regenerative agriculture practices and processes for the development of the circular economy.
We want to develop projects that promote the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the participants throughout the production chain involved.