Completed
Tiny Food Gardens for children's homes
Garden tables and garden boxes that let children's homes grow their own vegetables and herbs, from a COVID-era fundraiser in 2021 to 53 food gardens in 6 homes by the end of 2023.
- When
- June 2021 – December 2023
- Where
- Children's homes in Paramaribo, Wanica, Commewijne and Coronie
During the COVID-19 pandemic, vegetables often disappeared from the menu in children’s homes. The Tiny Food Gardens bring them back: garden tables and garden boxes where the homes grow their own vegetables, herbs and spices, so they know they are giving their children healthy, unsprayed food.
Each garden comes with a planting workshop, a booklet to track the plants, and a workshop on the responsible use of single-use plastics, combined with a course in planting herbs in PET bottles. Two staff members of the Ministry of Agriculture help with the workshops and supply the seeds. The gardens are made by Tiny Gardens Suriname.
Through a train-the-trainer programme, young people from the homes learn woodwork and planting, so that they can build the gardens themselves and help with the planting. Four of them monitored the planting in the homes for six months, to make sure the project would last.
Adjusting along the way
During the project it became clear that watering the plants raised the homes’ monthly water bills, while their budgets were already tight. Part of the budget was therefore used to buy water tanks to collect rainwater for irrigation. Compost buckets were also placed at the homes, so that leftovers become rich soil for the plants.
The end result: delicious homegrown vegetables from young gardeners. The project later grew into Suriname’s first food forest.
How it unfolded
A fundraiser for mini-gardens
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most children could not go to school and prices for healthy food rose, the Green Growth Champions organised a fundraiser to start mini-gardens for children's homes. The garden tables are built by inmates of the country's prison as part of a resocialisation project, and Lilian Wiebers of the Kari Yu Foundation coordinates their distribution.
Garden tables for the first six homes
The fundraiser raised enough to give two garden tables, with plant material and a training, to 15 children's homes around the country. The first six to receive them were Huize Campagne and Smart Kids Academy in Paramaribo, Kindertehuis Ekklisia and Kindertehuis Leliendaal in Commewijne, and Kinderhuis Elim and Kinderhuis Riyos in Wanica.
Four Tiny Gardens for Huize Campagne
Thanks to a collection by Radio Mart / Ladies Table Talk, Huize Campagne was surprised with four Tiny Gardens, supplied by Tiny Gardens Suriname.
A donation from Fernandes Bottling Company
Fernandes Bottling Company donated SRD 318,430, the proceeds of its 2022 Coca-Cola Christmas Caravan fundraiser, to Green Growth Suriname. Ambassador Christio Wijnhard accepted the cheque and used the budget to continue the Tiny Food Gardens.
The results
6 homes in 4 districts received tiny food gardens: Kinderhuis Saron, Kinderhuis Riyos, Kinderhuis Sukh Dhaam, Rorita's Creche in Tammenga, Trees Oppashuis in Coronie and Senior Citizen's Home Lunor in Coronie. More than 150 children took part; 53 tiny food gardens, 4 compost buckets and 35 PET-bottle spice planters were placed; 11 young people finished the train-the-trainer programme; and 4 were trained to monitor the planting in the homes.
Contributors
The ambassadors who worked on this project, and what each of them did.
Christio Wijnhard
Project coordinator
Accepted the Fernandes Bottling Company donation in February 2023 and used it to continue and coordinate the gardens: 53 tiny food gardens for 6 homes in 4 districts, plus a train-the-trainer programme for the young people living there.
