What?

The department ‘Schools for Schools’ invites Flemish schools to fraternize with schools from the south.
A Flemish school undertakes actions to provide financial resources. With these financial resources, the partner school can set up a school garden. Contacts between cooperating schools are personal, intense and of long term. Members of the Department ‘Schools for Schools’ provide information and follow-up of the project.

Objectives

• Offer young people in the partner school a chance to cultivate their own vegetables and fruits and, after possible sales at the local market, they can buy additional school equipment.
• With this project, we try to satisfy the other needs of the school as well
• Enable young people to grow vegetables and fruits in an efficient way, by using soil improvers, by making compost, by planting hedges, etc.
• Make these young people conscious about the value of sustainable development, the importance of soil and water management and the combat of soil erosion.
• To draw their attention to appropriate management of the vegetation and planted forests and to the maintenance of fertilized soils..
• Involve the parents of students in the school garden. This will motivate the parents to participate in other cooperation activities with Terr@dialoog in the region.
• Create awareness of our students of the value of sustainable development and water management, and make them conscious of the ecological footprint.
• Offer them chances to know more about different cultures thanks to direct contacts between their schools. This can result in a site visit.

Target group

This project addresses all Flemish schools, from primary schools till colleges.
Our Flemish schools choose a partner school from the list of schools requesting the support of Terr@dialoog. A school garden project is preferably combined with a community garden project for the women of the same village, or with other projects of Terr@dialoog in the environment. In that way, we help the community pedagogically, ecologically and economically.

Coordinator: Lieve Hoet
Collaborators: Leen Geerts, Elsie D’Hollander, Caroline Verbruggen, Christine Staelens, Gerda Verkoelen, Tine Buysse