Thirty-eight teachers from seven provinces in Indonesia participated in BIOTROP’s Second National Training on School Garden for Student Literacy and Nutritional Improvement held at the Centre’s campus on 10-14 July 2017. The participants were from various kindergarten, elementary, junior high and senior high schools in Jambi, Lampung, Banten, DKI Jakarta, West Java, Central Java and DI Yogyakarta.

This training was specifically aimed to (1) enable participants to internalize the importance of nutrition to the education development of school children; (2) provide the participants basic knowledge and skills on school garden models and agriculture technologies that could be adopted in a school garden setting; (3) introduce the concepts and principles of online teaching system to support literacy and nutritional development in the context of school garden; and (4) enable the participants to design their school garden plans for their respective schools.

In conducting this training, SEAMEO BIOTROP collaborated with two other SEAMEO Centres, namely: Regional Centre for Food and Nutrition (RECFON) and the Regional Open Learning Centre (SEAMOLEC).

In his opening remarks, Prof Arief Sabdo Yuwono, SEAMEO BIOTROP Deputy Director for Resource Management, emphasized the importance of implementing the outputs of this training to improve the nutritional and academic levels of students in Indonesia and Southeast Asia for their personal development in the future.

The participants received lectures and undergone hands-on exercises on: 1) School Garden Models for Literacy and Nutrition Improvement; 2). Nutrition status of students; 3) Household-scale composting of organic waste; 4) Hydroponic Production; 5) Basics of Vegetable Cultivation; and 6) Project-based Learning System.

The participants also learned about formulating action plans on establishing school garden in their respective schools as the major requirement of the training. The participants presented their action plans during the last day of the training for peer critiquing and further improvement.

At the closing ceremony, Dr Jess Fernandez, BIOTROP Deputy Director for Program, encouraged the participants to continue communicating with each other to share and learn from their school gardening experiences as well as documenting their good practices to be included in the book that the Centre plans to publish in 2019.

Resource persons for this training were Dr Awang Maharijaya from Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB), Dr Luh Ade Ari Wiradnyani from SEAMEO RECFON, Mr Dona Octanary, S.Pd from SEAMEO SEAMOLEC, Ms Indrayani Supandi who is an alumnae from the 1st Batch of School Garden Training, and Prof Arief Sabdo Yuwono, Dr Jesus C. Fernandez, Ms Riana Hartati, and Mr Didi Junaedi from BIOTROP.