Pius Seda describes himself as a young changemaker. The 22-year-old is the executive director for Greenify Global, a youth environmental conservation movement working in schools in Zomba, Malawi.
Seda and his colleagues are working on a programme called Permaculture in Schools which is targeting primary school students. The project is being funded by Global Changemakers Organization.
“Our goal is to address nutrition and environmental issues by creating agricultural ecosystems that are sustainable and self-sufficient. We have gardens in both schools and we are growing everything organically,” he says.
Permaculture in Schools aims to build agricultural ecosystems that are sustainable and self-sufficient.
“We are targeting primary school students and it is being done in two institutions, namely Grace Orphan Care and Vulnerable Support Group and Matiti Government Primary School. We got the funding for the project from the Global Changemakers through their community action project grants,” says Seda.
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Earth care, people care and fair share
Seda’s small team of environmentally minded young people has been working on the project for four months now.
“We realised that environmental and nutrition issues are escalating in our country. To tackle this, we thought of initiating this permaculture project in schools. We are targeting kids because we believe that we can change the status-quo if they are empowered from little.”
The Greenify Global volunteers provide both theory and hands-on lessons, trying to make the contest as interesting as possible to engage the learners. They have also managed to plant vegetable gardens, fruit trees and herbs in the schools.
“We are happy that the students have started enjoying the vegetables. We grow everything organically, so we are using composting. This is helping in restoring the soil, realising healthy yields, and reducing food waste. We also use natural remedies to pests and diseases.”
Lessons on nutrition are included in the programme, and the volunteers teach kids about essential food groups and how prepare their own food. One of the schools we are implementing the project in, Matiti Primary School has even incorporated the project in their curriculum.
“Essentially, permaculture is a bunch of things. It has three notable principles which are: earth care, people care and fair share. We are therefore instilling a lot of important values to the kids,” says Seda.
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