Rwanda takes on child malnutrition head-on through school gardens
From mere 600 grams of seed to community-wide change, Rwanda’s Sustainable School Feeding Innovations project is helping schools grow high-iron beans, improve child nutrition and share seed and knowledge with surrounding farmers.
- crops
- empowerment
- knowledge
- nutrition
- school feeding
Rwanda takes on child malnutrition head-on through school gardens
From mere 600 grams of seed to community-wide change, Rwanda’s Sustainable School Feeding Innovations project is helping schools grow high-iron beans, improve child nutrition and share seed and knowledge with surrounding farmers.
The story starts with a handful of bean seed. At GS Kayanga in Rwanda, the school received just 600 grams of seed. The first harvest produced 15 kilograms. School representative Hycinthe Nyirahabumugisha recalls that teachers kept five kilograms for replanting and shared the other 10 kilograms with ten parents. The next harvest was 48 kilograms. It may sound as a simple story, but it captures what is happening in school gardens across Rwanda. It began in a small plot behind a classroom, but it is increasingly finding its way onto children’s plates, into parents’ fields and, eventually, into the wider community.
Today, high-iron beans are becoming part of school meals and farmers’ fields, while also changing conversations about nutrition. Iron deficiency and stunting remain significant barriers to children’s development across the country. But some of the responses are being grown only a few metres from the classrooms.