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No Child Left Inside: Hawai'i Island School Gardens and the Kohala Center
Sep 22, 2009 | By Jacoby Young
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Beginning in 2001, the Kohala Center was created as an independent, not-for-profit center for research and education. The center has made it their mission "to respectfully engage the Island of Hawai'i as an extraordinary and vibrant research and learning laboratory for humanity". They go about this through a multitude of programs; The Mellon-Hawai'i Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, Hawai'i Island Meaningful Environmental Education for Teachers (HI-MEET), the Hawai'i County Agriculture Development Plan, the Waimea Nature Camp for youth, and many more.
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What interested me most about the Kohala Center's activities were the Hawai'i Island School Gardens Network (HISGN). Starting in January of 2008, calls were made to all 75 schools in Hawaii county to find out what programs were established. Out of these, 20 schools were found to have some kind of program, one of them was as old as 10 years, others still in the talking phase. Nancy Redfeather, Project Director, held monthly meetings, workshops, and garden tours to assess the situation in the schools. Flash forward to September 2009 and 49 schools have started or are starting gardens. The vision is "a garden in every school with a garden teacher in every program."
Nancy explains the program, "Varied and rich garden programs are being pioneered in all corners of the community. We are returning to something we know is the right thing to do. These young men and women and their mentors are taking on learning the knowledge of how to grow food. And in so doing, they are learning once again to connect with the land and with each other." Through this program the schools are able to report to her two times per year with the results of their program, how much square footage they have expanded, how the food is used, and how many pounds were produced.
To get another perspective I was led to contact Donna Mitts, the East Side Coordinator for the HISGN. As I walked up to the greenhouse at Pau'uilo School on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, I saw children in a line. They waited as patiently as children do while talking to a shadow in the tool closet. After receiving their hand tool for the day the shadow emerged to be Donna herself. A big bright smile on her face, as the kids followed her (a 3rd grade class of 27) I could see she was well-adapted to this kind of leadership.
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Donna Mitts has been working as the Parent Community Network Center Facilitator at this school for 10 years. In these years she has taught gardening and sustainable agriculture to "many hundreds for sure, probably over a thousand." She says, "In the past two years I had around 150 students per year. This year we have around 200 students every week from grades Kindergarten through 6th grade."
Our conversation was dotted with Donna showing the children how to thin keiki strawberry plants, remove weeds, and how not to step on the beds. What an amazing sight, seeing all these kids scrambling around each with a hand-shovel. "My students love to dig in the soil, plant seeds, feed chickens, care for our goats and harvest produce. Many students also have a keen interest in investigating and managing our worm bins." They don't always come prepared though, as a young girl came with a white dress. "You knew it was garden day!" Donna joked, "Do you want to participate today?" The little girl smiled and said "Yep I wanna."
When asked what some of the biggest successes of the garden, Donna's face lit up as she talked of the garden being HOFA (Hawaii Organic Farmers Association) certified and the steady growth of the youth agriculture program. "Last year we began harvesting our macadamia nuts and taking them to a local roaster. Once folks tasted them they sold out very quickly," she also mentioned. "I am also very happy with our community connection with Hawaii Rainbow Worms and Recycle Hawaii. For the last several years our school has hosted community composting/worm composting workshops. These are consistently well attended workshops and I like knowing we are helping to increase our community awareness of the importance of composting plant and paper waste materials."
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An interesting project happening is the creation of vermicast, the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by the species of earthworms. "I am also excited about developing our school's mid scale worm composting system for managing our cafeteria food waste. Parent volunteers will soon begin constructing a shed to house the worm troughs. These long worm-composting troughs will eventually be able to process 50 pounds or more of food waste daily. We will also produce nutrient rich vermicast to use in our garden which can also be sold as a program fundraiser." As a request Donna stated "I am still trying to source some used 30"-36" plastic pipe in any length to use for our worm troughs. If anyone knows of a source please contact me".
Some challenges that the program is facing also came up in our conversation. "There are currently 49 school gardens up and running on Hawaii Island. Almost all of them can use volunteers." In addition to the lack of volunteers, there is a lack of funding, "As of now the Hawaii Department of Education does not usually financially compensate garden coordinators. These gardens need care during weekends and holidays and do best when consistently managed. Developing a paid position for coordinators would be a wise investment in our state's food security. We are actually working towards growing future food producers. Teaching people to produce food for themselves and their community is vital to our island's sustainability and should be nurtured and given investment and support," said Donna. "Our school's ag. program was not included in our budget this year. Any funds for our program come from our produce sales and grant money. I would also welcome any help with grant proposals from volunteers."
The unique approaches that the Kohala Center is planning to take to resolve these issues as well as others are in the near future. Nancy says, "The short term goals are to assist any school on Hawai'i Island to plan and create a school garden. Assist teachers with relevant curriculum, identify agricultural resources and farmers in each district that could share their knowledge (Farm to School-School to Farm) create opportunities for Student Farmer's Markets, tell the emerging stories in media, write grants to support these programs and teachers, consult with faculties, administrators, and interested community members to envision a garden and how it would be used by the faculty and the steps to creating the garden, provide in-service workshops for garden teachers, build an interactive and up-to-date website to share events, resources, knowledge, and help to build a conceptual framework for an integrated curriculum linking food, culture, health and the environment."
The Kohala Center believes that everywhere there is a school garden it will permeate into the homes of the students, their family members, and the communities, all around the island. Promoting the message "that our island can and should increase its consumption of locally produced food."
If you are interested in volunteering with Donna and the great kids at Pau'uilo School contact her at 808-776-7710, ext 235. Classes are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, 12:15-2:15. I request that volunteers arrive at noon and stay until 2:30 to help with set up and clean up. If you want to volunteer at another school on Hawai'i Island contact, Nancy at nredfeather@kohalacenter.org.
The HISGN is just one small piece of the incredible activities, research, and planning that the Kohala Center is doing. For further information please visit http://www.kohalacenter.org/
Comments (1)
Stacia Noelani said...
I'm late to the garden party, but this journal write-up rules! I'm fascinated by the School Garden Programs.
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