Exploring Local initiatives to spread the Organic Kitchen Garden Movement- Part 1

The vibrant biodiversity in an Organic Garden

While inaugurating our Kitchen gardening project in schools at a govt. school in rural Chamarajanagara, Ms. Hepsiba Rani, CEO Zillapanchayath heralded a larger dream into our minds. In her key note address she had expressed her desire to see a day when the whole of the district embraces the project. She even thought aloud and said if all the fifty thousand students studying between sixth and tenth grade in the district take to kitchen gardening in the district that would be a befitting answer to whoever calls this district backward. For an instant the idea seemed like a shear slogan usually made by politicians. But on casually letting my mind ruminate over a dozen issues that the district is plagued with, I realized the importance of Organic Kitchen Gardening (OKG) for sustainable growth of the society. In fact that is the need of the hour.

I went through a lot of literature about the rebirth of organic lifestyles in the west and the ways it found an entry into India. I also collected some documentaries about the OKG movement in Cuba, and the manner in which the country survived the stringent embargo since the late eighties. I shared these resources with Rajan and Valli and we furthered to expand our data base. We also read about the different agencies conducting courses in Organic farming and Permaculture within India.

The booming sale of Organic products

Unknowingly we were preparing for something what we didn’t know…..are we heading to launch a movement? Yes a very, very slow and steady one that will take shape within the schools. In these days of comfort it is not easy to ask people to sweat it out, if it is not for any fancy reason. Some sixteen years ago in Mysore, a small initiative called Nesara was made by a group of nature lovers to promote organic farming and to market organic products. Even though people laughed at them that day, there are at least fifty shops more mushrooming all over the city. Each of them are organized enough to be the first to put up a stall in any public gathering. With increasing awareness, sellers have an exponentially growing market at their feet. With nobody scrutinizing the produce their sales are endless and can be unfathomable.  I am sure we cannot have such a stride in making people produce organic food; especially if it is not meant for sale.  Any how we have made a humble beginning here and we can only daydream upon it.

All we have are two honest organic farming practitioners on hand and a few jugglers like me in Hasiru hejje who go from school to school. But how do we reach out far and wide across the district? Sitting in this remote corner, three hours of marauding drive from the headquarters how can we even think of reaching out to this single district with five circles? Chamarajanagara, Kollegala, Hanur, Yelandur and Gundalpet; all of them have their schools so widely dispersed. Of the five circles I have contacts with teachers and students of Gundalpet for a long time. For years I have been meeting them at the camps in Bandipura organized by the CPR Center for Environment education. It would not be difficult to barge in into that circle and speak about the issue. But for this season we neither had time nor manpower to venture out of our target area. So our option was to focus all our efforts in this region and show good results so that someone may replicate the job in other areas. For such a thing to happen, good results and rewarding experiences of the project had to be showcased. But how do you mobilize children to come over to this remote corner of Chamarajanagara?

Venturing out to propagate OKG 

The CEO might have also been eager to see the response of the schools and the community to this OKG initiative. In fact we were ambitious to call her back for one of the valedictory functions so that she sees a few gardens first hand. Unfortunately she was transferred out of the district a month ago.

 

Soon after finishing the first round of visits in the school we took an opportunity to visit the far end of the district. We set out to Bandipur and visited to the school at Mangala in the fringe of the National Park. With the long association I had with this school it was easy to ask for a day’s interaction with the higher secondary students. With the enthusiastic head mistress here who was not new to the works of NGOs readily welcomed us.  Her school was frequented by many NGOs althrough the year. Among a host of conservation NGOs pouring in goodies to this school VANAM foundation stands different. It is different in its approach and looks for the long term gains. So apart from providing hard ware support to the school it is providing additional teachers to this school and a coordinator to look after the Nature club activities in the school. As the result the students reciprocate to our kind of activities much better then many schools. In spite of being cut off from the main stream their exposure to a variety of resource persons has made them different.

Children taking an  oath to go organic and
propagate the same in their community

Given a full day we improvised a concise version to the three chapters we were dealing on three different occasions. By the end of the day two dozen polythene bags were sown with vegetable seeds. The children and the school were given the same varieties of seeds and the same competition was announced for the best kitchen garden.

Three months later, there comes a day when a student delegation from Mangala village school in gundalpet taluk   has a chance to visit Anisha to study about OKG. Thanks to Vanam Foundation, for the good gesture of supporting this two days event. There were twenty eight children and four staff members who were benefited out of the outing. Such is the small beginning of every big tree.

-Manu K