A Garden Village For Ghana

Educating Ghana's youth in techniques of regenerative organic agriculture, sustainability, and eco-literacy to improve food security, restore local ecosystems, and reduce carbon emissions.
Creating a successful teaching and training model in Ghanaian schools that can be replicated by others.
Providing project-based lessons in science, technology, math, art and language while teaching school children the skills required to operate a successful small regenerative farm and pass this knowledge on to others so that hunger and malnutrition can be lessened, business skills are learned; educational achievement rises; and the cycle of poverty can be broken.

Project

Yamoransa, Ghana is a food insecure coastal village. Children lack nutrients found in fresh fruits/vegetables. The original Savannah/ tree canopy is gone to make charcoal for cooking and severe hillside erosion and lost top soils have resulted. Without rainwater capture and storage, it is not possible to farm in the dry season. California Native Garden Foundation (CNGF), an ecological education/training/research non-profit, created Garden For Ghana (GFG) to address these concerns. With the assistance of unemployed village youth formed into a Green Club, CNGF has built seven gardens at schools in Yamoransa and created rainwater capture and storage systems. A junior green club composed of students from village middle schools is committed to growing the crops in the gardens and teaching students at participating schools how to help with this work. Using the Earth Heroes Badge program from CNGF, and in partnership with college interns, community members and mentors, schools teach science lessons and other lessons on the teaching farms.The harvests supply the school lunch programs.

Green Clubs

American Field Service helped establish the first local Green Club with youth who had graduated from school and hadn't yet found jobs or gone on to university. In partnership with University of Cape Coast students in the Department of Public Health and Population Studies, the Green Club built the first gardens in Yamoransa, Ghana and formed a base of community support. Once the gardens were built, it was suggested that middle school students form Junior Green Clubs (JGC) to take over growing the food and to perform any necessary improvements and repairs. The JGC students wear club shirts and earn Earth Heroes nature badges while completing farm projects and learning about farm management and agricultural targets. A project manager visits all garden plots weekly and meets with the JGC and teachers to address any challenges and include the solutions in the monthly work plan.Junior Green Club members have become mentors to other children, teaching primary school students and their own classmates from middle schools how to plant seeds, save seeds, monitor and tend plants, and harvest food.

Students share knowledge with others to turn the village green, learn local ecology and produce crops. All students benefit from healthy foods they grow at schools.
By training the next generation of students to grow food while protecting natural resources and renewing the land, we help guarantee the future of humankind on our planet.

Outcome of Project

In 2014, six sites were located, fenced and secured, and soil organic content was built up. A well was dug, and roof rainwater capture systems were put in place. Composting in place was performed by placing alternating layers of aged manure and plantain leaves and allowing the rains to decompose the pile over a period of several months. Planting beds were created by forming four-foot mounds with pathways between. During the four years since the first school gardens were built in Yamoransa, annual business reports produced by the project manager have been presented to CNGF and school and town leadership. Depending on the soils, Regenerative organic agriculture (ROA) can be five- to ten-times more productive than either organic or conventional farming. At harvest feasts, students receive rewards and recognition for goals met, new projects begun, challenges addressed, and new partners gained. The GFG model has also inspired many in Yamoransa to create their own farm plots, including elected officials, teachers, and members of the village elder council. They have used ROA methods and their own resources to build and manage their plots.

Crop Education

The gardens grow comfort foods, like corn, groundnuts, okra, and green pepper. Each plant has its own purpose. Drought-tolerant plants and perennials are grown to conserve water. Superfood plants and native plants like cowpeas and okra are grown to help with nutrition, as are orange-flesh sweet potatoes, developed by Ghana Farm Extension to help fight childhood vitamin A deficiencies. Other plants fix nitrogen; all selections help fight climate change by improving soils, conserving water and delivering high nutrition without requiring chemical fertilizers. Leaves of nitrogen-fixing trees and compost replace manure. Nitrogen-fixing perennial shrubs, like pigeon peas, are planted in native hedgerows alongside crop mounds to help manage insect pests. Perennial foods, like Malabar spinach, provide fresh spinach year-round without repeated plantings. Planting with native plants and using native grasses in hedgerows improves biodiversity and attracts more pollinators to help increase pollination in the food plants.

The Synsepalum Dulcificum tree or the miracle fruit. When you eat the fruit, for about 60 minutes afterwards, any sour food that you eat, like lemons or dill pickles or grapefruit will taste sweet.
Orange-fleshed sweet potato provides the body with an extremely high amount of vitamin A. Just one small root (100-125 grams) of most orange-fleshed sweet potato varieties can supply the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A needed by children under five years of age.