Have you ever thought about what it must be like to be a child sitting in a gray and dusty 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 grim slums surrounding major cities. Jobs are rare, families are under stress, and there’s just never any money, period! Worst of all, this situation is not going to change any time soon. Probably not in our lifetime!

 

Concerned people, both local and abroad, realize that international food aid can only go so far and often runs out just when it is most needed, as in the current international financial crisis. To survive, communities have to find ways to help themselves. An intervention is needed at the local level. One solution to the problem is to promote food gardens in the schools themselves, managed jointly by the community, parents, teachers and, for the most part, by the children themselves. Labor is freely available and skills can be taught, but the problem is that what little money can be collected must go towards buying tools, seeds and fertilizer. The tools would not be sophisticated and can be donated or borrowed. It would be necessary to buy some seed, but partly it can be collected from the last harvest. Fertilizer is always the main problem. In many areas the soils are very impoverished and would yield little.

 

This is where worm composting can kill you with a hand. Vermiculture produces high-quality organic fertilizer that can be 20 times richer in nutrients than natural soil and provides trace elements and beneficial microorganisms to crop roots, while improving disease resistance and moisture retention of crops. 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 set up, 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 top of a drain 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. Vermicompost is harvested by removing the bottom tire from the bottom. The tire is emptied of compost and then returned 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 offal), which can be donated by other schools, already in the program, or by interested individuals.

 

Composting piled tire worms is a suitable low-tech solution to a pervasive Third World problem. It is a technology that does not require constant cash injections and can be managed entirely by the communities themselves. In addition to everything else, children will have a lot of fun raising worms and will 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 feed him today, teach him to fish and you feed him forever.”

 

Think about it, maybe there is something you can do to help.