Why food forests?

The core purpose for developing food forests is because of environmental destruction that has greatly fueled hunger, malnutrition and poverty in rural communities. Those who are mostly vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition are mostly children in the school going age. These come from home hungry and spend the whole day at school without eating anything. This emotionally affects their concentration in class and also kill their love for education. These children drop out of school at an early age with no skills for self sustenance. Most of them join drug addiction and prostitution and end life miserably. On top of this, schools have desert grounds which hungry children sadly sweep every day. We felt it worth to start turning these grounds into food forests so that children get nutritious food while learning practical skills for self-sustenance. Children can in turn take the skills as ambassadors at home and produce enough food for home consumption and the balance for sale.   They also develop environmental care ethics and learn how to make soils regain their fertility. In due course they stop encroaching on swamps and forests in search for fertile land

Turning a desert land into a food forest takes a lot of commitment and resources especially in terms of practical trainings, but it has a lot of impact to all school stake holders and the community as a whole when they see a desert gradually changing into a food forest. We use schools as an entry point to communities. We do carry out practical sessions on school desert grounds turning them into food forests. We incorporate ethics of Permaculture as well as integrated land Use designs to create sustainable gardens.  During these trainings, we engage all community stakeholders including students, teachers, school administration, parents, PTAs, local leaders.