Students of Al Resala Secondary School for Girls display their harvests of vegetables at the Mahaseel Festival under the initiative ‘Farm Your Country’.
A group of the students of Al Resala Secondary School for Girls displayed their harvests of vegetables at the Mahaseel Market in Katara with the aim of spreading community awareness and with the participation of the ‘Gharsah’ (Cultivation) Home Agriculture Initiative.
The move came under the initiative ‘Farm Your Country’ launched in schools by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment representative by Public Parks Department in collaboration with Al Faisal Without Borders Foundation (ALF) to educate students about the importance of agriculture and environment.
The project aims to implement plans and programs in the field of agricultural awareness for school students and to achieve the desired goals for protecting the environment from pollution and preserving natural resources.
The ‘Farm Your Country’ initiative is the result of a bilateral agreement between the Ministry of Municipality and the Environment and Al Faisal Without Borders Foundation as community engagement through schools to raise awareness of the importance of agriculture and afforestation.
Under the initiative school gardens are used to build national capability among students since childhood in a bid to boost national food security program.
The initiative also aims at building skills among the students enabling them to meet the their food needs and giving them the opportunity to cultivate by their own hands for self-reliance.
The Public Parks Department provides support to the project of farming your homeland in an integrated technical support. Under the initiative, the school students compete in cultivating vegetables at the premises of their schools.
Agricultural engineers from the Public Parks Department were assigned to provide agricultural guidance and instructions directly with the assistance of supervisors from each school at the rate of 10 students from each school.
The season runs for four months from November to February. Each school planted in thermocol boxes to reduce the operation cost of the project, especially in schools that do not have a school garden, and the use of alternative means in the lack of fertile land for agriculture.
