Have you ever thought what it must be like to be a child sitting in a dusty gray classroom, desperately trying to concentrate, while hunger continually gnaws at your stomach? This is the daily reality for many African children, both in remote rural communities and in the dire slums that surround major cities. Jobs are a rarity, families are under stress, and there’s just never any money, period! The worst of all is that this situation is not going to change in the short term. Probably not in our lifetime!
Concerned people, both local and foreign, realize that international food aid can only go so far, and often runs out, just when it is needed most, as in the current international financial crisis. To survive, communities have to find a way to help themselves. Intervention at the local level is needed. One solution to the problem is to promote school-based food gardens, run jointly by the community, parents, teachers and, for the most part, the children themselves. Labor is freely available and skills can be taught, but the problem is that what little money can be collected must be spent on buying tools, seeds and fertilizer. The tools would not be fancy and can be donated or borrowed. You would have to buy some seed, but part of it can be collected from the last harvest. Fertilizer is always the main problem. In many areas the soils are very poor and would yield little.
This is where worm composting can end up with a hand. Vermiculture produces high-quality organic fertilizer that can be 20 times richer in nutrients than natural soil, supplying trace elements and beneficial microorganisms to crop roots while improving disease resistance and moisture retention. the poor soils. Crops that are grown with vermicompost will be completely organic and organic food is much healthier than any commercially grown produce. Providing food for the worms is not a problem, there is always organic waste to collect, in the form of animal manure, crop litter, paper or fallen leaves. Of the many types of worm farming systems available, the stacked worm farm, which costs nothing to install, is the most suitable solution. We have described the setup and operation of this simple system in detail on our website at http://www.working-worms.com/
In short, all kids need to do is collect old discarded tires and stack them on a drainage board, as described in the article, and then start feeding organic waste from the top. Compost worms will naturally migrate towards the food, leaving their feces (worm droppings) behind them. Vermicompost is harvested by removing the bottom tire from the bottom. The tire is emptied of compost and then returns to the top of the pile and so on. The beauty of this system is that it costs nothing to set up and can be replicated many times, to create multiple sets of individual worm farms at whatever scale is appropriate. All that is needed is a small amount of training and a supply of suitable compost worms, usually eisinia fetida (red wigglers), which can be donated by other schools, already in the program, or by interested individuals.
Composting stacked tire worms is a suitable low-tech solution to a widespread Third World problem. It is a technology that does not require constant injections of cash and can be managed entirely by the communities themselves. In addition to everything else, the children will have a lot of fun raising worms and learn something useful. Best of all, they will be doing something positive to improve their own lot, without relying on any kind of handout. This builds human dignity. “Give a man a fish and you will feed him today, teach him to fish and you will feed him forever.”
Think about it, maybe there is something you can do to help.
