Fresh food from a 'slum' school!

Every weekday morning, Sim clean the office and cooks lunch for our staff. In the afternoons, she teaches Grade 3. Last Friday, the students took home some some of the fruits of their labour; 700g of morning glory.

Sim learned to grow vegetables when she was in primary school. She remembers that the school had a large plot of land and a dam nearby, making it easy to take care of their plots. They planted cauliflower, spinach, lettuce and morning glory. At home, Sim has experimented with planting all of these, plus pumpkins, cucumbers and melons. Over the past month, the Grade 3 students at MMF were divided into six small groups of five students to try their hand at growing green beans, spinach and morning glory. Unfortunately, the beans didn't take and the spinach was eaten by insects. But the morning glory, 'tragoon' as it's known in Khmer, flourished.

Sim said that she wants to continue with the 'tragoon' and also to try green beans again (with different seeds). She said, 'We have to plant things that will grow quickly. I'm always afraid that some families will move to Thailand before the students get to harvest their own vegetables!' Sim also commented, 'Whatever jobs they have in the future, I want my students to know the basics about farming.' For now, they're getting hand on learning, they're enjoying seeing the playground alive with colour and I'm sure they enjoyed a good meal over the weekend with the vegetables they grew themselves!