Naigaga of Iganga SS exports farming skills from school to home

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 GREEN SCHOOLS PROJECTS 

Ethel Naigaga is the vice-president of the Young Future Farmers of Africa Club of Iganga Secondary School in Busoga region, which is implementing several projects at a go. 

She says they are earning millions of cash from the various projects and at the same time also skilling students, enabling many to start their own projects at home. 

Naigaga says she has taught her mother some of the skills and that they are currently running a number of projects at home. 

For instance, last December, she sold 50 birds and got a profit of sh1.5 million, enough to pay her fees of sh1.2 million and the spare for pocket money. 

Her school (Iganga Secondary School) is part of the Green Schools Initiative, a project started in schools in 2023 to encourage young minds to act on climate change through adaptation or mitigation solutions.

The initiative is in its second year of implementation by Vision Group in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and is funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Uganda.

Debate and innovative projects around climate change are the two tracks of the initiative. 

Evaluation teams are visiting schools to assess the projects of participating schools in 10 regions around Uganda. The best projects will see the schools behind them awarded at the national championship in Kampala this August.

The innovative solutions developed by participating schools aimed at mitigating or adapting to climate change must be realistic.

Meanwhile, at Iganga Secondary School, aquaculture and horticulture are the biggest projects.

In their first cycle of fish farming harvest in May, the students harvested all the 300 catfish and restocked for the next harvest that is coming up this September. 

For horticulture, the club members harvest vegetables on a weekly basis for students' consumption to enrich their nutrition. 

They grow spinach, lettuce and sukuma wiki (kale), which they sell to the school, teachers and the community members. 

From their earnings, they have bought an icecream machine, with which they make icecream for the school. 

Club patron James Isooba says that under the poultry project, they keep 3000 layers and 1,000 broilers. 

They also have a dairy unit where they keep cows that produce 60 litres of milk per day. They also have 15 pigs.

The school grows bananas on one-and-a-half acres and sells the crop on a weekly basis. Last season, they sold their big harvest ever: 5,000kg of bananas. 

The students also practise drip irrigation systems in the vegetable garden using plastic pots.

They collect plastic waste materials and exchange them with a plastic company that supplies them with pots for growing vegetables.

The Young Future Farmers of Africa Club supplies birds to hotels, teachers and the school administration.

They have companies such as AVSI and Mukwano that support them. 

The club often receives schools, including Busoga College Mwiri, for benchmarking visits.

Tendo Hope Namatovu, another member, says they use drama (plays and poems) to sensitize students, learners in nearby schools and community members on the importance of going green.