THE school gardening programme at the Onampira Combined School has been a huge success, with pupils recording a bumper harvest on Friday.
The programme sponsored by Score is under the guidance of subject teacher Edwig Andunge and Grade 11 and 12 pupils held their seventh harvest of the year on Friday.
Although the school garden produces a variety of vegetables including sweet potatoes, green pepper, spinach and onions, on only tomatoes were harvested on Friday.
The harvest coincided with the school’s entrepreneurship day where pupils applied their business skills to sell various items among themselves, to teachers and the local community.
The tomatoes from the school garden were also part of the entrepreneurship drive.
Andunge said Grade 5 to 7 learners have also been participating in gardening since its establishment in 2010.
“We started this gardening on a small scale after realising it was important for pupils to have both theoretical and practical education in agriculture,” Andunge said.
One of the pupils, Elizabeth Shimanya, described the garden as an additional study aid.
“Now we are learning through practical experience, unlike before when we learnt of drip irrigation system gardens only through pictures in the book,” said Shimanya.
Score is a five-year project funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It has been jointly implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry since 2015.
Project coordinator for Oshana, Omusati and Kunene regions, Mirjam Kaholongo said Score provided a water tank and micro drip irrigation system to Onampira CS for the garden.
“We are happy with how Onampira CS are managing their garden and we are encouraging other schools to emulate the example of this school, which is currently the champion in our project,” Kaholongo said.
Besides Onampira, Kaholongo said Eendjati, Oupumako, Iiviyongo and Joseph Mbangula schools also have Score-sponsored gardens.
The project also sponsors community gardens in the Oshana region at Omulathitu (Okatana constituency) and the Eloolo Youth Agricultural Project (Okaku constituency).
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