SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The La­dy Ho­choy School in Gas­par­il­lo has em­barked on a hy­dro­pon­ic pro­gramme for its stu­dents. The project is be­ing done through a part­ner­ship with SURE Foun­da­tion which is al­so sup­port­ed by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion teacher Sharon Ja­grop ex­plained that they teach chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties rang­ing from mild to pro­found, and their goal is to equip the stu­dents with a means of mak­ing an in­come and pro­vid­ing for them­selves when they leave the in­sti­tu­tion.

Ja­groop said they chose the hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem if they had lit­tle or no land to do gar­den­ing.

“If you are liv­ing in a con­crete junc­tion you can use buck­ets and re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate a kitchen gar­den and you can sell from it as well as feed your fam­i­ly,” she ex­plained.

Not­ing that the project is on­go­ing, Ja­groop said they taught them how to set up the sys­tem and they in­tend to teach them about fer­til­iz­ers, dis­eases and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic and skill ar­eas, in­clud­ing gar­den art.

She said the stu­dents were al­so giv­en seedlings to take home to set up their own hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem.

Com­mend­ing the in­sti­tu­tion on this ini­tia­tive, Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein of the SURE Foun­da­tion not­ed that the food im­port bill was $8 bil­lion and the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in agri­cul­ture was 56 per cent.

“If we could by in­no­v­a­tive means, by in­tel­li­gent means, get more of the labour force in one form or the oth­er to par­tic­i­pate and to bring more food on the ta­ble and re­duce the food im­port bill, that is a win-win. T&T will be a much bet­ter place if we have much more in­ter­ven­tions like this,” Ho­sein said.

With the coun­try rid­dled with crime and mur­ders, Ho­sein said it was im­por­tant to high­light mo­ments like this with teach­ers and stu­dents “mak­ing small steps and a dif­fer­ence in im­prov­ing the coun­try.”

He en­cour­aged oth­er NGOs and cor­po­rate bod­ies to sup­port the pro­gramme and the school. Some of the seedlings be­ing grown are pep­pers, sweet pep­pers, let­tuce, cau­li­flower, cel­ery, patchoi and baigan.