EKYAN Stories 4: when a school garden becomes a classroom

Across 200 public schools in Busia, Kisumu and Samburu, EKYAN built regenerative and climate-resilience learning hubs: raised beds, drip irrigation, cone gardens, mandala beds, fertility trenches and recycled containers. The plots were meant for students. They did not stay that way.

Parents stopped at the plots on school visit days to ask questions. Farmers from surrounding villages walked in to see how a one-square-metre cone garden could hold 100 plants, or how a discarded bottle could become drip irrigation. Agripreneurs sharpened their skills as local service providers, county extension officers stayed to learn, and teachers went home and built their own kitchen gardens.

277 teachers reported learners sharing agriculture and nutrition knowledge with their families, and 247 reported seeing parents adopt those practices. Alongside that, 4,591 kg of harvest went straight into school meals.