School Gardens Update: Meet Christine!
June 4, 2015
Christine Amono is one of the school demonstration garden group members of Teddi Primary School, located in the Pabbo sub-country of Amuru. Christine has four children, all of whom attend the school- two are in Primary 5, and her youngest are in P1. Christine is an active and dedicated member of the local community; in fact, she has been the Vice Chairperson of Teddi’s School Management Committee since 2002. Christine tells us: “I am the chairperson because of the value that people saw in me so they felt that I would be the right person to help with the management of the school. This is a voluntary position that does not pay whatsoever, and they just came up as a community initiative because the other schools that are surrounding this place are very far”.
It was Christine’s commitment to improve the school which motivated her to join the school garden group: “The farmers group is very good because I feel that if I am part of this school garden group then it will help in the development of our school being a community school without any other external support. I think it’s going to develop the school in a way that when they do the funding, sell the proceeds, a percentage of the proceeds from the farming go to the school to go for the needs that the school may have such as scholastic materials and books.”
Alongside working to improve the local school, Christine – like 90% of adults in Amuru – is a full-time farmer, and sells her produce to send her children to school. Christine hopes to replicate the techniques being used in the school garden at home to improve her own yields: “when I get back home, the same skills that I acquire from the group will help me in my home. I’ll take them back to my home.”
An important livelihood strategy in this region, Christine is also keen to pass on her farming knowledge to her children: “I think it is good for the children to learn agriculture skills because it improves on the quality of the skills that they have, agriculture being the main thing that they do at home. When they go back home they can still enrich what they already have at home through learning agriculture.” As part of the School Demonstration Gardens programme, the livelihoods teams will also be shortly launching student garden clubs, which Christine’s older children will have the opportunity to join, to learn new agricultural skills.
With the profits generated from the school garden, Christine is hoping to save a portion to help pay for her children’s school fees, and then invest the rest through buying a young goat.
Our hope is that through the school garden project, Christine will be able to achieve these goals, and will one day have many goats running around her property!
