A children's school teaches its community enviromental agriculture

In one community near Yogyakarta, a partner has worked with the school, rebuilt after a 2006 earthquake, to reintroduce traditional foods like yams, arrowroot and cassava to the students and community. The Green Revolution had made such foods "old-fashioned". One teacher told us how a government officer told him to pull up his root crops and plant mangos, a cash crop, instead.

With the example of the school and teachers, the community is now eager to grow these traditional foods. They have chosen ones that will grow beneath the existing trees so as not to contribute to global warming.

Local food is now integrated into every part of the students' day -- they use local beans for counting games, have a physics lesson on why adding citrus to a locally-produced herbal drink makes it change colour, and play schoolyard games with coconut hulls. Local foods replace foreign foods (like apples) in texts. The method of teaching has also moved from book learning to active learning for at least half of each day.