Gendi Primary School is growing its own future 🌴

At Gendi Primary School, the market garden is becoming much more than a place to grow food. It is helping the school feed its pupils, generate income and involve children directly in caring for a resource that belongs to their community.

The garden now includes an impressive 400 banana plants (60 planted just this last week) alongside 52 papaya trees, 10 avocado trees and 24 moringa trees, as well as vegetables grown for school lunches.

And the children are part of the story. Pupils help care for the garden on a daily basis, from adding mulch and manure in the holes around the plants to watering them. It is a practical lesson in how food is grown and how land can become a sustainable resource.

With the trees being planted at different times they will get to maturity at different times , with the first batch expected to fruit early in 2027. The school is already excited with the fantastic progress. The fruit will sell for anything between Tsrh10,000 and Ths20,000 pre bunch. 

It is up to the school to work out what they do with the fruit, but we know some will be sold to pay for the farm hand costs, some will be eaten by the students to supplement their diet, while we expect the majority to be sold and the income will be used to support the costs of running the school’s maintenance programme. The choice is theirs.

Earlier in the year the school also planted beans. Unexpectedly heavily late rains injured the plants at the flowering stage which reduced the harvest, but despite that they still produced approximately 250 kg. Some were used to support out of hours meals for Standard 7 students who were studying late in to the evening and over weekend for their national exams, some will be retained for planting next season and the remaining is to be sold in November/December when the price is at its highest.

At a recent meeting of the market garden it was recognised that the Head Teacher is too busy to keep a close eye of progress so it was agreed that a community leader would take over leadership and would be supported by a deputy chair, 3 teachers and a group secretary. All finances are to be recorded on Mkoba, where many monitor income and expenditure - open governance and transparency is essential to this project.