Siem Reap, KH – Garden helps children go to school happy and healthy! – 31 Aug 2017

Sarey Moy, Seruy Meuy, Seray Peut and Samnang are four of the KK family’s five children. A few years ago they had not been attending school regularly because of lack of food. Their mother did what she could to provide food and shelter for the children, but sometimes they went without food, and even could not afford the school fees.

One of the school teachers spoke with Rey, the Peaksneng Garden Shop Manager, and explained that in her experience hungry children score lower on tests, have more behavior problems both in class and at home, and are more likely to drop out of school. To make it worse, when hungry children are in class with empty stomachs they are easily distracted and so have problems concentrating on their class work. This means that good nutrition can reduce absences from school, and most significantly improve children’s performance and reduce drop-out rates.

The Peaksneng Garden Shop wanted to assist the KK family to feed their children so that they could do better at school. Therefore, a year ago it provided the family with the means for their children to grow healthy and better educated. The shop did this by assisting them to establish and operate their own organic vegetable garden. The garden has been a great success because it has provided the family with hope by supplying healthy food and extra income from selling surplus vegetables, which is used to buy other food ingredients for their kitchen.

Serey Meuy and her sisters used to be drop out from school when they were hungry. Since the shop helped their mother build the garden, it has contributed to their better health. Serey Meuy can now say “When I wake up in the morning, I get ready to go to school very quickly because I know we have food to eat before we leave for school, I’m happy that I will not be hungry and can spend the whole day learning”.

The children have become better students because their bodies and minds are now better nourished and healthy. Eating enough food at home has reduced absences from school, and most significantly their performance has improved. Just like the school teacher predicted!

The family have experienced a long list of benefits from the garden, some they never expected! The list includes: enough food and vegetables for the family, small income, understanding the importance of organic farming, adding green leaf beauty to their surroundings especially during the dry season when the land dries up, they have invited people to replicate the family garden, it has increased their self-esteem, making good friendship around the community, they have less worries about where they will get their next meal, and finally the exercise they get when working in the garden makes for a healthy life style.

The family has also had to deal with a list of challenges like: water shortages, bugs eating the plants, neighbors’ animals damaging the garden, maintaining the whole garden all year round, maintaining the soil’s productivity, and the income is not large enough for all their needs because of poor prices in the local market.

Despite all these challenges, the family will continue with the garden because it enables them to take a step towards realizing their dreams of being able to send their children to college, have their own home with light and water, and have their own transportation.