Faamu Up

Grow more, Work less

Faamu Up is a network of after-class gardening clubs and it exists to promote sustainable food security by encouraging practical based learning. The Gardening Club is a fun, interactive and effective tool in teaching and enhancing gardening skills with an aim of boosting academic excellence, promoting the love for gardening and developing stronger connections with food and where it comes from.

Before the 21st century, children in Uganda learned gardening skills from elders and parents. Today, a few homes can afford gardening space because land mainly in urban areas is being turned into industrial and settlement land, children spend more time at school and parents are too busy. In primary schools, agriculture is not taught as an independent subject. The problem is children do not get substantive gardening education because educators mostly deliver theoretical lessons to explain practical concepts mainly in science classes and this disconnects learners from nature and real life experiences.

The solution is to provide gardening training and garden curriculum resources through gardening clubs. After training, schools are able to set up a school garden that is used as a practical teaching tool for all academic subjects and it is managed by the gardening club. The garden is an innovative strategy that lets educators incorporate hands-on activities in a diversity of interdisciplinary, standards-based lessons. The garden engages students by providing a dynamic environment in which to observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn.

Faamu Up is working on a web platform where teachers and educators allover the world will easily access garden curriculum resources for their specific grades and subjects with practical lessons and activities.

We advocate for vertical and container gardens since they can be set up in small spaces, and they nature creativity and innovativeness among children. 

Gardening clubs are new in Uganda and the network is connecting different primary schools and educators to collectively implement a practical method of delivering knowledge and skills to learners that caters for their different learning abilities.

The gardens provide fruits and vegetables and this promotes increased consumption among children. The foods nourish their bodies, increases alertness in class, boost their memories and thus promote better performance.

Our approach focuses on attitude and mindset shift among children. We believe that if they learn the right habits while they are still young, these habits will stick into adulthood.

We are working on a web platform that will be accessible by teachers and educators where they will access curriculum resources in form of video lessons and activities.

Additionally, we shall incorporate agriculture technology in the gardens like soil less gardening, modern composting for advanced learning.

We plan to establish gardening clubs in 50 primary schools and having at least 20 children in each of these clubs. The gardening clubs will be responsible for taking care of the gardens in their respective schools.

We also plan to reach at least 500 teachers and educators with the garden curriculum resources to incorporate in their lesson plans. 

We plan to extend our services to 200 schools in the next three to fives and over 10,000 children.

We plan to reach out to communities by challenging children in the gardening clubs to ask their immediate families to join them in growing home vegetables to enhance their food diets, manage waste properly to reduce carbon emissions and promoting proper nutrition.

The solution will be accessed through a web platform after a subscription has been made. We reach our customers mainly through word of mouth and referrals. We shall offer membership status to primary schools that subscribe.

We shall use gardening clubs to drive the move among children in the different primary schools. These clubs will be responsible for taking care of gardens in their respective schools and will participate in competitions time to time where they will receive rewards.

We have launched the gardening club in one school so far with 20 children. The children have been trained in basic gardening skills and have set up a garden at the school premises. They are also enjoying fruits and vegetables from their garden.

One educator is currently using our garden resources and it is making his teaching much simpler.

In 12 months, the web platform will be running and we expect that about 500 educators from 50 schools will be using it. About 1000 children who we expect to have signed up for the gardening club in their respective schools will have the necessary knowledge to tend a garden.

In 3 years, I expect educators to be reporting improved academic performance by children in the gardening club, better attitude towards different academic subjects and better understanding of text book concepts.

Victoria Nakitto, team leader has experience working with communities since she has worked with women on a community project training them in handcrafts for two years.She has a certificate of entrepreneurship from Bocconi University, Italy and currently pursuing another certificate in Entrepreneurship, and is a food scientist by profession with substantive knowledge in food security.

We use a subscription model. Schools, educators, children subscribe to get our resources like training, setting up a garden, garden curriculum resources and hosting a garden club in school. 

We offer membership to schools so that children in the gardening clubs can easily renew their annual membership subscription and encourage others to join.

We hope to increase our profits by setting up a demonstration garden strictly for children where they will come for garden tours and study.

We are working on a web platform where all our resources will be accessed by people outside Uganda.

I believe Solve will provide me with mentorship customized to the needs of my business to help me scale and get to the next level.

I believe it will provide will a network of fellow entrepreneurs for meaningful interactions and connect me with policy makers as well as funders.

I believe that through Solve, I will be able to get funding to scale the business.

Technical knowledge base: We are young entrepreneurs who need immense knowledge on how to run an enterprise. With the mentorship from Solve, we believe we will be better positioned to run and scale the business with expertise.

Educating the market: Most schools have no gardens and some do not see the need for it.It also takes a lot of time and resources to educate them. We believe Solve can help us in developing an application where the schools will find out how to use our solution so that we minimize on time and resources used.