Have you ever thought about what it must be like to be a child sitting in a drab, dusty classroom, desperately trying to focus, while hunger continually gnaws at your belly? This is the daily reality for many African children, both in remote rural communities and in the dire shanty towns surrounding major cities. Jobs are a rarity, families are under stress, and there is simply never any money, period! Worst of all, this situation is not going to change anytime soon. Probably not in our life!
Concerned people, both local and external, realize that international food aid can only go so far and often runs out, just when it is most needed, such as in the current international financial crisis. To survive, communities must find a way to help themselves. Local intervention is necessary. One solution to the problem is to promote food gardens in the schools themselves, managed jointly by the community, parents, teachers and, above all, by the children themselves. Labor is freely available and skills can be taught, but the problem is that the little money that can be raised must go towards the purchase of tools, seeds and fertilizers. The tools would not be fancy and can be donated or loaned. Some seed would have to be bought, but some of it can be collected from the last harvest. Fertilizer is always the main problem. In many areas, soils are very impoverished and would produce little.
This is where worm composting can help. Vermiculture produces a high-quality organic fertilizer that can be 20 times more nutritious than natural soil and provides trace elements and beneficial microorganisms to the roots of crops, while improving disease resistance and moisture retention of soils poor. Crops that are grown with vermicompost will be completely organic and organic food is much healthier than any commercially grown product. Providing forage for worms is not a problem, there is always organic waste to collect, in the form of animal manure, crop trash, paper or fallen leaves. Of the many types of vermiculture systems available, the stacked tire 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 the kids need to do is pick up the old discarded tires and stack them on a drain board, as described in the article, and then start feeding the organic waste from the top. The worms in the compost will naturally migrate onto the food, leaving their feces (worm waste) behind them. The vermicompost is harvested by pulling the bottom tire out of the bottom. The tire is emptied of compost and then returns to the top of the pile again and so on. The beauty of this system is that it costs nothing to install and can be replicated many times, to create multiple sets of individual worm farms at the appropriate scale. All that is needed is a small amount of training and a supply of suitable compost worms, usually eisinia fetida (red waggers), which can be donated from other schools, already in the program, or from interested individuals.
Composting piled-up tire worms is an appropriate low-tech solution to a pervasive Third World problem. It is a technology that does not require constant cash injections and can be managed by the communities themselves. Besides everything else, children will have a lot of fun growing worms and will learn something useful. Best of all, they will be doing something positive to improve their own lot, without relying on handouts. This strengthens human dignity. “Give a man a fish and feed him today, teach him to fish and feed him always.”
Think about it: maybe there is something you can do to help.
