MIT Solve

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Our Solution

School Farms

Our solution's stage of development:

Pre-Seed

Our solution:

School Farms ensure the availability, utilization, and access to school meals by empowering community schools to grow their own food.

Our pitch:

Community schools are increasingly faced with the challenge of funding school meals due to limited government support, the rise in food cost and market failures.

School Farms seeks to ensure the availability, utilization, and access to school meals. It recognizes the link between education, nutrition and skill development and is improving access to all.

School Meals increases school attendance, retention and active teaching and learning activities in schools by more than 25 percent. It is helping achieve SDGs (2, 3, 4 and 10)

School Farms provides a cost effective and sustainable solution to school meals. Its core elements: Farms, Meals, and Skills help achieve its goal.

Community schools are supported by School Farms and key stakeholders to grow their own organic food. School Farms prioritizes the growing of staple crops, vegetables, and fruits. With produce from the farm, schoolchildren are offered sustainable in-school nutritious meal for healthy growth and mental development

Schoolchildren are offered the opportunity to gain practical agricultural skills for future prosperity. To achieve this, schoolchildren signup to School Farms Club for training and mentoring and an opportunity to undertake an independent agriculture project for the Best Student Famer Award.

The problem:

Community schools are increasingly faced with the challenge of funding school meals due to;

Limited and delay in the release of government feeding grant to schools.
The continuous rise in food cost.
Market failures that affect access and availability of food.
High cost to education.
The perennial problem of schools closing down over some period or delay in reopening after every academic break.

Why our solution will solve the problem:

School Farms collaborate with key stakeholders in providing a cost effective and sustainable access to nutritious in-school meals from the school farm whilst using the same space to help schoolchildren acquire practical agriculture skills in agriculture.

70 percent of the harvest is used as school meals and 30 percent is sold out. Of this 30%, sold out, 20 percent is reinvested into the farm and 10 percent is used as farm management cost.

Who recommended you to Solve - or - how did you find Solve?

I saw it as a responsibility to my country and community.

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The technologies we employ:

Agricultural technology

Why our solution is unique:

It provides 100% organic farm produce and makes use of smart agriculture for climate adaptation.

Drip irrigation system

Organic pesticide

Organic manure

Why our solution is human-centered:

School Farms collaborate with key stakeholders in providing a cost effective and sustainable access to nutritious in-school meals from the school farm whilst using the same space to help schoolchildren acquire practical agriculture skills in agriculture.

Access to free land and low-cost labor from the community.

Access to extension service from the local Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

Ghana Health Service will design nutrition program at no cost.

How people will access our solution:

Community schools are supported to grow their own organic food. School Farms prioritizes the growing of staple crops, vegetables, and fruits.
With produce from the farm, schoolchildren are offered a sustainable in-school nutritious meal for healthy growth and mental development.
Schoolchildren are offered the opportunity to gain practical agricultural skills for future prosperity. To achieve this, schoolchildren are signed-up to School Farms Club for training and mentoring. The training kit is School Farms Manual. Schoolchildren get the opportunity to undertake an independent agriculture project during school vacation to enter into School Farms’ Best Student Famer Award Program.

Technology-Readiness Level:

6-8 (Demonstration)

Our website

https://www.schoolfarms.org

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