Community Farming with Children in Bangalore, India

The children were first shown how to loosen the soil and clearing it of stones

Organic Conversations blog
Dec. 2010

Excerpts:

For the last couple of weeks, some of us at the Bangalore Terrace Gardens (BTG) group had been discussing the possibility of community farming with children and today we finally made a start.

It was interesting to watch the children in such a setting. They were keen to help, yet unsure of how to proceed. As one mother shared, ‘ They are so eager to help then why are they being so hesitant to step on the soil or make furrows, etc?” And as we realised, it holds an important learning for us – that the disconnect between today’s children and the earth around them is so real that unless we make efforts like this to familiarise them with it, they will fail to see any connection at all.

Once the seeds were sown and watered, the children were off to see the calf and cows, climb the lovely badami mango tree and just run around and play. Before leaving we relished a lovely snack on banana leaves thanks to Mrs Amaranth. The children were requested to write/draw and share their thoughts about what they had done today. Now we look forward to coming back in 2 weeks to see the little green spikes!

For some of us, an experience like this is the closest we will get to discovering the joy of connecting with the earth as the narrow confines of our urban homes offers such little space for us to do this on an everyday basis.

Read the complete article here.