Plenty volunteer, Mark Miller, guides students transplanting seedlings at the Mafredi school, one of six Belize schools where Plenty is assisting in the development of gardens for education and for growing food for the School Feeding Program.

The Toledo District of Belize is the most remote and undeveloped area of this semitropical Central American nation. The district contains a wealth of ecosystems ranging from sprawling wetlands to wide-open grassy savanna and dense coastal mangrove to steamy tropical rainforest, which are home to countless varieties of plants and animals and more than 560 species of tropical birds. The rural population of Toledo (primarily Mayan and Garifuna peoples) relies to a great extent on subsistence slash and burn style agriculture focused on three major crops – corn, rice, and beans. This type of traditional agricultural practice uses 5-7 times the land space as sedentary agriculture. As the district’s population grows (it has already experienced a 36% increase from 1991-2000), it exerts increasing pressure on the land to produce. As a result, the district is faced with a vicious cycle of diminishing productivity of the land as fallow periods are shortened, and increasing destruction of rainforest habitats to create more agricultural space.

Most of the District’s population lives below the poverty line. Malnutrition is a persistent and widespread problem, especially among children and pregnant women, as typical diets based on subsistence foodstuffs do not include sufficient amounts of essential nutrients. Recent data from Belize’s Ministry of Health stated that over 49% of children in Toledo District showed some degree of malnutrition, and 46% of Mayan children show growth retardation. This directly affects their ability to learn and function effectively in school.

The challenges facing Toledo residents were aggravated by Hurricane Iris, which ravaged the District’s population centers and adjacent rainforest on October 8, 2001. Not only did Iris destroy the homes and personal belongings of thousands, it wiped out ripening food and cash crops, as well as huge tracts of productive forest. Loss of cash reserves, poor crop yields, and difficult living conditions continue to plague these families, making it harder for families to feed and educate their growing children, to rebuild their lives, and simply to survive.

Plenty Belize has designed the GATE project as an integrated response to address the multiple problems described above— environmental degradation, unsustainable agriculture, and poor nutrition. We have a strong project team of experienced staff and volunteers who bring to the table their skills in project management, education, nutrition, environment and agriculture. Plenty Belize will cooperate closely in this endeavor with the Toledo School Feeding Program (SFP), with whom we collaborated in 2002 in a short-term hurricane relief project which established organic gardens at six targeted schools. Their participation in project oversight will ensure that the schools are helping to guide the project towards success.

The goals of the GATE project are:

• To increase understanding and use of locally available, low cost, environmentally sustainable agricultural practices including organic gardening methods and appropriate technologies among students and their farming families in the Toledo District.
• To raise awareness of the environmental impacts of current agricultural methods, and increase the use of more sustainable alternatives, thus improving natural resource management.
• To minimize the effects of poverty amongst the rural population of Toledo by making available to schools and communities a more balanced and nutritious supply of food combined with knowledge of proper nutrition.

The project strategy is to create a model in the seven targeted villages that can be replicated by both village residents and other interested communities. Via a two-pronged approach of conducting education and information activities and establishing model organic gardens, the GATE project will focus and deliver upon the following measurable objectives in the course of one year:

1. Improve the teaching capacity of at least seven primary schools through the development and dissemination of appropriate teaching aids and educational materials, using an integrated curriculum approach including sustainable agriculture, organic gardening, and environmental education combined with traditional classroom subjects.
2. Involve at least 200 primary school children in interactive classroom and garden-based learning activities so they acquire an elementary understanding of sustainable agriculture and its relationship with food security and the environment.
3. Train and mentor two village garden specialists in each targeted community, who will be equipped to teach and demonstrate the basics of sustainable agriculture and organic gardening to village residents as well as provide consistent support to the school gardens.
4. Strengthen and expand the six existing gardens and their support systems, and create a seventh. garden, all of which will provide supplementary fresh produce for each school’s feeding program.
5. Demonstrate the methods and benefits of organic gardening and sustainable agriculture and their relationship to a healthy biosphere to at least 300 community members via participatory practices and at least two village presentations based in and around each school garden.
6. Raise public awareness of the effects of deforestation by current agricultural practices, and their relationship to global climate change and the protection of biodiversity, and provide information about alternatives to minimize negative environmental impacts.
   

Based on consultation with community members, school personnel and our experience, we are convinced that this program of information and education, in conjunction with establishing and maintaining the organic school gardens, has the potential to achieve the wider acceptance of more sustainable agricultural methods in local communities. In addition, the project will provide nutritious fresh food supplies for participating schools and their feeding programs. The GATE project aims to maximize the use and development of locally available human and material resources, and minimize dependence on outside resources, thus making replication easier, which in turn will help to ensure a sustainable and broad impact.

Link to next GATE article, Spring 2003