Only 37 yuan per meal, how do you achieve fully organic? Principal Youzi did it

This Wednesday, I finally visited the long-renowned Puhe Elementary School in Xinfeng Township, Hsinchu County. Under the leadership of Principal Wu You, known as the "Pomelo Principal," food and farming education is carried through every detail of daily life. After the "doomsday food waste" produced at lunch on March 15, 2014, the school has achieved "zero food waste" ever since. The principal's boldness and persistence are key, but her faith in "education" - firmly believing that education should always come first in helping students succeed, that "there are no miracles in education, only accumulation," and that "it is not about letting others see, but about giving oneself an 'account'" - is absolutely the key that showed me a successful model of food and farming education. As the principal shared, I was moved to tears………

When asked about the hardest thing the principal encountered? It was dry goods procurement failing to attract bidders 8 times! In order to let the children eat the highest-quality and safest ingredients and purchase in appropriate amounts, the school followed Article 7-2 of the Procurement Act, "fresh ingredients procured independently," so dry goods had to be tendered separately. But surprisingly, even after 8 rounds online, there were still no bidders. This actually required a great deal of administrative cost! The principal sincerely thanked the administrative team for their support, but the principal still persisted, because only this way could the children eat good ingredients. (Many regulations are actually restrictions, not assistance in helping us do things well.)

When you are determined to do one thing well, all kinds of helping forces will come in. Later, a caring person donated 1,000 kg of organic rice to Puhe, a retired teacher began engaging in organic farming, and a deeply moved kindergarten art teacher volunteered to come into the school to provide diverse art courses for the children of Puhe.

Puhe Elementary School still has many stories that cannot be described one by one, including the stray dog Xiaohei becoming the school dog, and the principal not turning these features into red banners hung outside the wall for publicity…… and so on. I fully felt that Puhe truly deserves the title of a "friendly campus," with positive values circulating on campus.

Food and farming education is not only green dietary education, nutrition education, and environmental education, but also life education and love education. In Principal Pomelo's Puhe Elementary School, I felt thick love and honor surrounding every corner, and I sincerely admire the educational model created by Puhe's integration of food and farming education!

Author's supplementary postscript:

I am absolutely not encouraging us to run school lunch down to only 37 yuan per meal. The point of writing this article is that such educational enthusiasm is moving and worth learning from.

For a long time, school lunch prices in Taiwan, China have been too low, which is very unreasonable. Moreover, because school lunch in Taiwan, China is a locally governed commissioned matter, conditions differ from county to county, especially with things like the county government footing the bill, which has spoiled parents!

In Hsinchu County, free lunch used to be provided all along, but because it consumed a huge amount of education funding, starting this school year it changed to parents paying on their own. But back when the county government paid 32 yuan per meal, Principal Wu You had already persuaded parents to pay 5 yuan themselves so the children could eat non-GMO primary processed products. Now it has become 32 yuan per meal and still paid by themselves. In fact, many parents at other schools already feel that "it's very different from before" (and many parents think this is already enough and nothing else matters).

We still advocate that lunch prices should be reasonably raised, as that is the most lasting approach. Principal Wu You herself is quite clear about this, but at this stage, this is already the best approach under surrounding difficulties.

Puhe Elementary School nutritious lunch: eating organic with zero food waste at 32 yuan