We support secondary schools to develop food growing projects and food-based enterprises.
We believe in learning through action and aim to include students, staff and local families in every step of the garden development. We can either support you for a short-term or provide on-going support.
Our Secondary School Strategy
Our aim is for every secondary school in Waltham Forest to not only be a food growing school but also encourage pupils into horticulture or food-based livelihood.
To achieve this, food growing should be embedded across all aspects of school life as part of a whole school food strategy.
We are providing a three part programme for secondary schools:
- Chilli Challenge – A simple food growing challenge to engage schools
in food growing - Horticultural training -We can provide structured horticultural training through ongoing garden sessions which focus on organic horticulture practice as well as ‘growing-to-sell’. These sessions can be part of the pupils’ extra-curricular garden clubs which welcomes pupils from Key Stage 3 and 4. This training will build confidence, aspiration, and motivation around food growing.
- Supporting food based employment and enterprise development – We can provide food-based enterprise and employment training grow/process -to-sell workshops with interested pupils (such as those from Business Studies, pupil’s involved with enterprise competitions or garden club). We can work with supportive teachers and career advisers to link pupils to their ‘next steps’ in horticultural and food-based opportunities including accredited training and work experience. We can also support a trip to our market garden as a demonstration of a successful food-based enterprise.
We can provide ongoing support to your secondary school by –
- Providing an Organiclea outreach gardener to run weekly school gardening clubs
- Training school staff to lead a gardening club
- Running gardening courses for parents
- Supplying resources to local schools, either directly from our main growing site or through our partnership with Forest Recycling Project: woodchip, recycled timber, compost, plants and seedlings (including specially devised school plant packs, to crop during term time).
- Running educational visits and workshops for local schools at our main growing site
- Offering general advice (as a Capital Growth local lead)
For more information on setting up or supporting a school food growing project please email schools@organiclea.org.uk
