Call to action: 

Crop museums are the backbone of the biointensive school garden project in the Philippines, a crosscutting self-sustaining initiative that provides critical youth nutrition and environmental education, supports agrobiodiversity conservation efforts, strengthens community food systems, and mitigates climate change. 

IIRR needs your urgent support to construct crop museums to the scale climate smart school gardens program. We aim to raise $20,000 for 20 school crop museums in the Calabarzon region on the main island of Luzon, where 244,000 students suffer from undernourishment.

$1000 = the tools and materials needed to build a crop museum at one lighthouse school. 

Quick Overview: 

• Agrobiodiversity conservation is central to food and nutrition security
  • Maintaining genetic diversity is essential to reducing vulnerability to climate change, which increases threats and unpredictability of food production
  • Philippines already experiences high rates of child malnutrition – 33% of school children – and its 108 million people are among the most at risk to changing climates across the globe
• Tools and materials are urgently needed to support schools in conserving and sharing indigenous, locally adapted and nutrient dense crops through biointensive gardening and seed management
  • $20,000 provides tools and materials to directly create crop museums – seed banks and nurseries – at 20 lighthouse schools (LS)
    • Here is a list of tools and materials fencing, garden nets, clamps, seed trays, metal tubes, resealable plastic, etcetera
    • Labor is subtracted from costs as it is provided by students, faculty, and IIRR staff 
  • A 200-square-meter crop museum produces roughly 100 seed diversity kits to be given freely to neighboring schools and the surrounding community
• Crop museums are critical to the sustainable spread of the Integrated School Nutrition Model (ISNM) developed with the Philippines Department of Education
  • Lighthouse Schools (LS) directly supports the creation and maintenance of the school gardens through serving as seed propagation centers, learning hubs, action-research sites, and demonstration sites
  • Garden-based education helps to raise nutrition and ecological consciousness in both students and parents
  • Strong connections to community promote circular economies and social benefits through an eco-nutrition lens

You can help by making a generous donation now!

• The video above does a great job at synthesizing all the important aspects of this initiative, please watch!
• IIRR is committed to transparency and aid effectiveness. We encourage you to take a deeper look into the innerworkings of the initiative here.   

About IIRR

International Institute of Rural Reconstruction ( IIRR ) is an international non-profit organization with a mission to enable communities and those who work with them to develop innovative, yet practical, solutions to poverty through a community-led development approach. Lessons generated are then widely shared to encourage replication. One of the world's leading rural development organizations, IIRR has a 61-year history of improving the lives of more than 15 million people in over 47 countries through applied learning, sustainable livelihood programs, and emergency response initiatives.