TOCO PERMACULTURE
TOCO Permaculture is an all encompassing program that uses the benefits of permaculture to address the nutritional needs of children across the Caribbean. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a design system that integrates organic farming, sustainable development and agroforestry to create self-sustaining and durable land use through the conscious design of natural ecosystems. Through designing based on the principles nature teaches us, permaculture enables individuals and communities to meet their basic needs of healthy food, clean water, shelter, and energy in a way that not only ‘sustains’ but actively regenerates biodiversity and natural resources. Permaculture systems are designed to work with locally available crops and materials, making them low cost, eco-friendly and productive. TOCO Permaculture has 3 projects in the works:
TOCO Permaculture School Garden
TOCO will establish a permaculture school garden at George Charles Secondary School in Southern Castries, St Lucia. The school garden will support a sustainable and nutritious, ‘home grown’ School Feeding Program to provide a healthy lunch for 100 children who cannot afford to buy food and come to school hungry and unable to learn.
The school garden will produce annual vegetables, fruits and other tree crops in a ‘food forest’ system that will be designed and implemented based on permaculture principles to ensure sustainability. A permaculture based school garden and ‘home grown’ School Feeding Program will thus help to maximize local reliance (not donor dependence) and ensure economic, social and ecological sustainability in the long term.
The permaculture school garden will serve as a ‘living classroom’ to educate all students in ecological and sustainable agriculture, environmental stewardship and self-reliance through learning by doing. All 490 students at the school will benefit from this education, especially the 220 agriculture students, and all students and teachers will be encouraged to establish home gardens. The school garden will also teach children, teachers and parents about nutrition and healthy eating, and how to select and grow nutrient-rich foods for a well-balanced diet, helping them build stronger immune systems. The project will provide an important source of income for the school through sale of produce to local communities and supermarkets.
TOCO Permaculture Community Garden
The TOCO Permaculture Community Garden will be designed to create a permaculture demonstration and training centre that will allow for the demonstration of and training in permaculture and sustainable building for farmers, youth, agriculture extension staff, community members, international students and other stakeholders; community development and outreach as well as the development of eco-tourism in St. Lucia.
TOCO Children's Public Park
The TOCO Children's Public Park will be a park and playground that will be open to the public and landscaped using permaculture design. The park will unify children, community and a healthy environment.
RESOURCES
To learn more about permaculture, please check out these links: