Written by Agroecology Fund Advisor Milka Chepkorir
All photo credits: Milka Chepkorir

On June 21, 2024, the Agroecology Fund was invited to a school agroecology learning field day at Ugolwe Primary School in Siaya County, Kenya. The event was organised by Agroecology Fund grantee partner the Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE) Kenya, who are a beneficiary of the Agroecology Fund through the regional umbrella body, ReSCOPE. Milka Chepkorir, Advisory Board member of the Agroecology Fund, attended the event and shared her experience.

Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE) Kenya is a national capacity-building and networking organisation founded in 2014. The organisation works with schools’ communities, to promote practical ecological land use and management practices, through agroecology approaches, to address the challenges of food & nutrition insecurity, increasing poverty levels, environmental degradation
and biodiversity loss in Kenya. Currently, SCOPE Kenya network has a membership of 16 civil society organisations (CSOs), working with 133 schools’ communities in 13 counties in Kenya.

The types of garden designs in the school compound include a rabbit system, fruit forest, key-hold gardens, sack gardens, a food plant circle, and much more.

The gardens are set in front of the school classes and offices. This structure and design choice primarily give life to the school environment. This provides things to look at and admire as parents and visitors wait to be served at the school offices.

At an early age, students are taught to be environmentally responsible by not using plastics either in the general school environment or in the gardens. This is a behaviour they have taken back to their homes to influence their villages. By working in the gardens together, the students learn to be tender and care for the plants in front of their classes and the school environment.

Contribution to the current school curriculum

The youngest students, in grades 1-3, have been offered opportunities to put into practice the skills they learn from the Carrier-Based Curriculum (CBC)–a new Kenyan school curriculum in which students are guided to set up vegetable gardens at the front of their classes and encouraged to take care of them, water them and learn through doing.

Working with the larger community

In the spirit of inclusion and spread of agroecological practices into the larger community, the SCOPE project has invited parents to participate. As a result, a group of mothers are now a part of the project. They take up the role of nurturing the gardens when the students are on holiday, and work together on community workdays at the school garden. The group expressed how the project has informed their decisions to set up gardens and practice agroecology at their homes, thanks to their children’s influence and knowledge from school. The women’s group has also started agroecological enterprises resulting from their involvement in this project, including selling of organic foods and fruits even at the school field day event.

Performance and art

Different schools in attendance skillfully prepared and presented skits, songs, narratives, and poems (in Swahili, English, and Dholu, the local language). A group of three judges awarded scores to the performing groups and individuals. The best-performing groups had prizes presented to their schools.

Some of the performance pieces included:

• A young boy from Sega Township Primary School presented a poem entitled Agroecology. In his poem, he pointed out the principles of agroecology and permaculture which included farming without chemicals, without altering or destroying the soil structure, and taking care of micro and macro-organisms like earthworms.
• The host, Ugolwe Primary School presented a piece on agroecological activities, encouraging people to practice them and emphasised the benefits of Indigenous foods to human health. Some of the benefits of Indigenous foods highlighted by the presenters included good immune systems to support the body away from lifestyle diseases, and physical strength needed by community members to perform activities in their farms and community.
• Lolwe Primary School presented a piece on Agroecology from an African perspective. The main points from the piece highlighted the fact that agroecological knowledge has been passed down through generations from the ancestors. They emphasized the need for the preservation of such knowledge. The piece was delivered with great African proverbs and phrases such as, “Listen to the whispers of cassava leaves on the secrets of the soil.”
• There was also a narrative shared by a boy and a girl comparing two types of head teachers in their school. One of the headteachers proposed and pushed for the setting up of a school garden on agroecological principles while the other pushed for chemical farming in the same farm. They named the pro-agroecology teacher Mr. Mapinduzi, translated as Mr. Revolution. The narrative went further to describe how the school ended up dividing the land into two and the teachers piloted their preferred systems. The agroecological farm had higher yields and attracted attention from the students and other school stakeholders.

“It was impressive to see the interest of school administrations and boards of management to be part of these kinds of projects and to be eager to involve their extended school communities. The involvement of students, as key players in the project, draws such positive promise for the future of agroecology as this aligns their choices and actions around food production to the right and the most effective methods that take care of the planet. The knowledge mastered and shared by young boys and girls through the different arts; songs, poems, narratives, dances, drama, was a clear indication that agroecology and especially the consumption of African Indigenous foods is key in the general health of humans and the planet. SCOPE Kenya’s role in reaching out to schools in the country to engage more students in learning and spread knowledge and skills, contributes largely to the need for change that the world needs at this critical moment. While many agroecology actors are focusing on change of policy and strategies on paper, it is encouraging to see actors like SCOPE Kenya working with schools and their communities in the practical implementation and support of agroecological activities with youth, the next generation of change-makers.” – Milka

About Milka Chepkorir

Milka Chepkorir is a young Indigenous woman from the Sengwer peoples in Cherang’any Hills, Kenya. For the last six years she has been working with her community to address land tenure issues in their ancestral lands, the Embobut and Kabolet forests. Due to lack of recognition of her community land rights, the community has faced human rights violations through evictions by the government of Kenya, all in the name of forest conservation. Milka has a special interest in gender issues and has been working with women and elders in her community to ensure women are included in the community land rights struggles. Together with the women in Embobut forest, she helped develop a cultural centre where the community hopes to carry out indigenous education classes to educate the youth and children about the Sengwer indigenous knowledge and systems, most of which have been lost or are diminishing. She is currently completing her Masters in Gender and Development Studies at the University of Nairobi. Her specific focus is on gender relations in community forest conservation among Indigenous Peoples. Milka coordinates the “Defending Territories of Life” stream of work at the ICCA Consortium. She was previously the Coordinator of Community Land Action NOW! (CLAN), a Kenyan movement of communities working to register their lands as community lands under the Community Land Act 2016.