Ngora Girls’ Secondary School SPG 2022 Report

𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐒𝐏𝐆 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞!!! Our 9th success SPG story is from Ngora Girls’ Secondary School, Ngora district in Eastern Uganda. Ngora Girls’ is a boarding secondary school with a local YoFFA chapter (Agriculture Education Club) of over 240 students from across the six high school classes. Like other schools, Ngora Girls’ registered to participate in the School Gardening Project in January 2022 and requested for tomato, collards, and egg plant seeds which they planted in April. The school gardening activities at Ngora Girls’ are done outside class time at 5:00-6:00pm and on Saturdays, said Grace, the school Head teacher. During project time, students participate in several agronomic activities including, nursery bed preparation and management, transplanting of seedlings to the main garden, weeding of the plants, staking, and pruning especially for tomatoes, harvesting and marketing. So far, students have harvested and sold their vegetable produce especially tomatoes (200kgs) to the school, and these are used to supplement their school meals, to their parents on visitation days, the nearby community and to school staff. Mr Aisu mentions that “students in this project are learning practical horticulture skills, entrepreneurship skills, leadership and communications skills, and problem-solving skills”. In addition, because of this project, students now appreciate the value of agriculture in addressing food and nutritional security among communities and are acting, back at school, the use of the harvested produce has improved the taste and nutritive value of Ngora school meals, students and staff are enjoying the beans like never before. All this success was attained despite being faced by intermittent rains, bacterial wilt, and blossom end rot. These affected the growth, development, and productivity of the crop, Mr. Aisu added. This two-teacher agriculture education program is led by Mr. Aisu Justine and assisted by Ms. Kulume Kevin. We thank the school head teacher Ms. Grace Nabuduwa who is an advocate for project-based learning for all the administrative support given to the team, and Mr. Nicholas Ssebalamu of Field of Hope for your voluntary agronomic support to this project. The School Gardening Program SPG 2022 is supported by Victoria Seeds (U) Limited Holistic eLearning Platform and the 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 (𝐘𝐨𝐅𝐅𝐀) organization. Good job, Ngora Girls’ Secondary School!!!