Childhood & Community Education

School, Community & Household Gardens

Through its school garden projects in Brazil, South Africa and Jamaica, INMED is working to dramatically reduce hunger and poor nutrition among nearly 100,000 vulnerable children and their families in communities through a combination of vegetable gardening, school lunch improvement, and a participatory health and nutrition education strategy that recognizes children as agents of positive, lasting change.

INMED’s school garden project sites are selected because of their extreme poverty levels and lack of basic infrastructure. Hunger and malnutrition are pervasive in many of the urban slums and remote rural areas where INMED works. Families struggle to obtain adequate food—in both quantity and nutritional quality—and poverty exacerbates children’s vulnerability to potential health threats. At the same time, many individuals in our project communities have little or no knowledge of proper nutrition. As a result, children and families in our project areas have very poor eating habits, and in some communities, children have only one meal a day—their school lunch. As observed by teachers in the project sites:

“The major part of the problems come from the lack of food. The child gets weak, and doesn’t have interest in studying. In my class, there are many cases of children like that. They are always tired.”

 “The family that has six people in the house and not enough resources doesn’t eat properly. We know that the child is always hungry.”

“Some children go to bed hungry and then come to school still hungry.”

INMED’s garden projects are working toward three major goals:

• Reduce hunger among impoverished children by increasing the availability of nutritious produce through school gardens and nutrition education for teachers, school cafeteria workers and mothers of school-age children
• Improve children’s health and nutritional status by increasing their access to nutritious foods; treating them for intestinal parasitic infections that rob them of vital nutrients; treating them for micronutrient deficiencies that compromise their physical and cognitive development; educating them on good nutrition practices and preventive health, hygiene and sanitation measures; and increasing their access to clean drinking water through simple solar technology
• Build the foundation for long-term improvements in the quality of life for families in the program communities by increasing food security and providing a potential source of income generation through the sale of surplus produce

Healthy Futures South Africa is also featured at:

• Monsanto: INMED Nutrition program overcomes environment, culture to improve children’s health in South Africa - Programme supported by the Monsanto Fund
• INMED Brings Healthy Futures to Children of South Africa - Monsanto Fund grant to expand nutrition program to all primary schools in Johannesburg township