THE Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) has reaffirmed its partnership with the Department of Education (DepEd) through its School-Plus-Home Gardens Project (S+HGP).
SEARCA's S+HGP project team visited director Nenneth Alama of DepEd's Bureau of Learner Support Services at DepEd Central Office on February 28, 2023.
During the meeting, program specialist Anna Gale Vallez of SEARCA's Research and Thought Leadership Department (RTLD) led the presentation of the current programs and activities of SEARCA's S+HGP in the Philippines.
In 2016, the S+HGP was dubbed as Participatory Action Research on School and Community-Based Food and Nutrition Program for Literacy, Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development Project.
According to Dr. Glenn Gregorio, SEARCA director, the S+HGP was a participatory action research project of SEARCA, the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), and DepEd Division of Laguna.
He said there were five elementary schools and one secondary school in Laguna province that piloted the S+HGP with the concept of using school gardens as experiential laboratories to achieve a three-pronged objective of improving the nutrition, education and economic well-being of school children.
Gregorio also noted that the S+HGP model was successfully adopted by more than a hundred schools, and continuously spread out and propelled among elementary and secondary schools in said province.
Since then, he said SEARCA has been an active partner of DepEd by complementing its flagship program on school-based feeding or SBF as well as its Gulayan sa Paaralan Program or GPP through SEARCA's S+HGP on-the-ground activities.
With this project, SEARCA has also conducted two online capacity-building training courses for elementary and high school teachers from Busuanga Island, Palawan in 2020, and for high school teachers in Cambodia in 2021, respectively.
Vallez said the e-training courses were designed to educate and facilitate knowledge sharing on the establishment of school and home gardens and integrate the key concepts of agriculture and food in lesson plans or academic curricula.
She said the courses were also designed to promote strategies that will inspire and motivate the youth to pursue agriculture-related courses.
According to Vallez, SEARCA is now carrying out the S+HGP scale-up activities for Palawan, Philippines, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and under the School Edible Landscaping for Entrepreneurship (SEL4E) Project for Rizal Province in the Philippines.
Moreover, Rochella Lapitan, RTLD senior program associate, said a series of learning events and training programs are already lined up for the coming months.
Lapitan said there will be benchmarking of key stakeholders from Busuanga Island, Palawan to selected S+HGP pilot and partner schools and municipalities in Laguna.
Another is the technical training programs on edible landscaping and sustainable food production; and the regional policy forum on sustainable and inclusive school-based feeding and nutrition programs in Southeast Asia, she added.
Alama thanked SEARCA recognizing its alignment of S+HGP initiatives in support of DepEd's programs adding that renewing DepEd and SEARCA's bilateral partnership through a formal agreement will articulate joint undertakings and mandates on strengthening the implementation of GPP.
"This will address malnutrition and promote vegetable production and consumption among school children," she said.