Kerala - Kochi   

The joys of gardening

HANDS-ON TRAINING: VFPCK chief executive officer Ashok Kumar Thekkan with the students of the Raksha Society for the Care of Children with Special Needs at the rooftop vegetable garden set up by the VFPCK at the Raksha office.

The Vegetable and Fruits Promotion Council of Keralam (VFPCK) and the Raksha Society for the Care of Children with Special Needs have come together on a unique project to make use of gardening for the education of Raksha's students.

The rooftop of Raksha's office at Thoppumpady is now lined with a variety of potted vegetables, which has thrown up a whole new world for the children who attend the classes at Raksha. A selected group of students take turns to water the plants, add manure and harvest the crops under the supervision of Elisabeth Philip, project coordinator of VFPCK. The children are not only introduced to the physical skills of watering and nursing the plants, they are also taught on natural phenomena like the growth of plants, budding and flowering. They harvest the crops they nurtured and eat curries cooked with them at the institute.

The vegetable garden on the rooftop is part of the Haritha Nagari project, a household vegetable production venture of the VFPCK. Girija Nath, executive secretary of Raksha, says that she actually stumbled upon the idea while visiting the VFPCK office at Kakkanad with an entirely different proposal. The vegetable garden that the VFPCK staff had cultivated on their own rooftop caught her attention.

Realising the importance of the work being done by the society, the VFPCK agreed to set up the garden without charging any fee. Their staff supplied the entire planting material and set up the garden. "At Raksha, they are doing an important service. So we thought we should also do our bit," says Ashok Kumar Thekkan, chief executive officer of the VFPCK.

Horticultural Therapy had always been an important part of the education of children with special needs. Raksha has made it a project for the students of Diploma in Special Education specialising in Cerebral Palsy at Raksha.

Renu Ramanath

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