Wugong Elementary School Food and Farming Education Series 1 - Getting to Know Our Little Companions

In recent years, more and more schools have been guiding students to learn about food and agriculture, and "food and farming education" has gradually gained attention. So-called food and farming education means re-establishing the relationship between people and food and between people and the land, understanding the food one eats, cultivating the ability to choose ingredients, and gaining a richer, more three-dimensional understanding of agricultural producers.

The Homemakers United Foundation has long paid attention to the issue of school lunches, and trains volunteers to go into elementary schools to read green picture books with children, introducing the differences between processed foods and natural ingredients and between conventionally grown vegetables and organic vegetables. Among these, the green food education course launched in 2012 in cooperation with Taichung Municipal Liming Elementary School, because the course was planned from the simple to the deep and from concepts to hands-on practice, even attracted the attention of then Taichung Mayor Jason Hu, who planned to promote it.

In 2015, the Homemakers United Foundation's Green Food Circle group, together with the National Taiwan University Little Companions team and Taipei City Wenshan Community College, used Taipei Municipal Wugong Elementary School as a food and farming education base to develop a set of food and farming lesson plans suitable for operation in urban elementary schools, and this experience will be introduced and explained through a series of articles.

Text / Chen Chi-nung (Convener of the NTU Little Companions)

Little Companions @ Wugong Elementary School

The Little Companions team is made up of a group of passionate university students who jointly took the course "Special Topics on Taiwan's Social and Economic Development - Urban Farming" in the first semester of the 2013 academic year at National Taiwan University. Carrying with them the discussions and understanding of theory and current social conditions from the course, as well as the moving experience of contacting land and food while building the rooftop farm at the NTU Department of Social Work building, the Little Companions walked out of the university campus, hoping to use this moving experience and reflection on society to let children have the chance to personally experience it from an early age through actually carrying out "food and farming education" in elementary schools, creating the possibility of changing the social environment and values.

The Little Companions believe that when children stand barefoot on the land, hold warm soil in both hands, bend down, and personally plant the seedlings they have grown themselves, this story - a journey of rebuilding an intimate relationship with nature - begins. From being afraid to touch soil and constantly running off to wash their hands, to happily observing earthworms, white grubs, stink bugs, lizards, and more in the soil, the children no longer need to hold smartphones or play video games to feel simple happiness. Starting from everyday food and connecting to farmland, farmers, and rural villages, in the process children can regain the simplest and most natural moving connection with people, land, and food. Thus, the Little Companions cooperated with Wenshan District's Wugong Elementary School to bring food and farming education into this urban elementary school.

From the second semester of the 2013 academic year to the present (the second semester of the 2014 academic year), the cooperation between the Little Companions team and Wugong Elementary School has lasted a full year. At the beginning, in the form of an after-school club, they guided 20 children in hands-on work in Wugong Elementary School's small farm; at the May harvest, the Little Companions led the children in turning the results into light sandwiches and perilla rice balls, and drew the course content as posters, letting the children set up a stall at the Hualien Holiday Organic Farmers' Market to share the harvest and what they had experienced and learned in the process with parents and community residents. During the summer vacation, following the seasonal rhythms of the second rice crop, we invited Teacher He Chun-hsien to guide us, built two rice paddies on campus, let the children experience rice transplanting at their own school, and also visited Tamsui Happiness Farm to participate in and assist with the first rice harvest, truly understanding how a bowl of rice goes "from farm to table," learning to cherish and be grateful through it. In the previous semester, in the form of holiday workshops, we also cooperated with NTU students from the "Mushroom Men and Mold Women" (Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Department of Entomology, and Institute of Plant Medicine) to let parents and children participate together in activities and hands-on work. At the end of the semester, the Little Companions also held a year-end achievement-sharing fair, with four booths (Find a Home for Rice, Hand-Painted Potted Plants, Farm Experience, and Display and Sharing Table) and two dynamic experiential games (Relay Vegetables and Farm Adventure), attended in shifts by all teachers and students of Wugong Elementary School.

Over the past year, the Little Companions tried many different models of courses and activities, and came into contact with many social organizations and community resources that gave us support. This semester, in response to Mayor Ko Wen-je's field elementary school education plan, Wugong Elementary School, building on its past foundation, will continue to work with the Little Companions team to implement food and farming education and root it in campus life.

• On Legislation for Food and Farming Education
• Wugong Elementary School Food and Farming Education Series 2 - Experiences During Morning Light Time

Support the Homemakers United Foundation's work in promoting food and farming education, donate to sponsor the "Children's Health Begins with Food and Farming Education" fundraising plan, so that more children have the chance to experience and learn~

For more donation methods, please see http://www.huf.org.tw/support-us