By Katty Ramirez | Project Leader
Agroecology offers an alternative to the traditional practices of agriculture, where the excessive use of water and chemical products that only directly affect the environment predominates.
The first Inclusive Agroecological School in El Salvador, looks beyond providing short courses to agricultural producers, directly influence the participation of communities from childhood, young people, men and women in order to involve all those who can become actors of change. It does not only seek to change the mentality or the traditional form of agricultural practice but to create value and environmental awareness in childhood.
In El Salvador, no official career is offered in the strengthening of adaptability to climate change, only informal graduates. The Agroecological School in Morazán will be the tool that will strengthen Economic Development through agricultural production. Sustainability is one of the main objectives, that from the initial education students of the school can create spaces for the active participation in topics related to organic production.
The experience of the eleven years of the Amún Shéa Integral Development Center is the fuel for the composition of a strategic plan that allows the communities of the north of Morazán to obtain income for their families through a pertinent rural education with focus on the agroecology, where human subsistence lays its foundations in agriculture.
The northern zone offers a very high tourist component and the agrotourism could become a very high potential, developed in a natural environment offering visitors the opportunity to know the effects of traditional agricultural exploitations, while an alternative trip is carried out that entails the respect for agricultural resources, livestock and biodiversity. Besides offering the opportunity to know the landscape and the gastronomy of the place as an anchor for rural tourism that helps to maintain life in the countryside.
The above will give us a vision for the development of another of the great components of the school, the impulse and support for the ventures, with creative or innovative ideas. Being aware that the farmers and local producers should not be seen as a marginal element, but rather focus efforts so that they have access to agroecological education, guaranteeing the strengthening of their practices in the crops.
For learning there is no age and the Inclusive Agroecological School promotes the incorporation of the community in general where the main requirement is to want to learn and in this way agroecology becomes an alternative teaching in the rural schools of Morazán.
The School will also be a teacher training center, so that teachers acquire the knowledge that allows them to integrate the contents and components of agroecology in different subjects, giving focus to each of their classes according to the context in which they are located. schools in the north area of Morazán. Only by involving the different sectors will it be possible to establish the bases that will lead us to a paradigm shift and leave the conventional form of crops.
In the framework of compliance with the right to education, the foundation promotes and manages spaces for the opening of scholarships, which allow students to insert themselves into working life by completing their studies of graduates, technicians and courses focused on agroecology.
With your support, we can open quality learning spaces for children, youth and adults through the Scholarship Program for Agroecology students and in this way we face not only the consequences of climate change, soil deterioration and lack of treatment water, we also contribute to the adaptability in the environment, with the main objective of building learning spaces friendly to the environment.
At school children learn the importance of crops to adopt them as part of their lifestyle and for food consumption.
Grace nursery student comments on her experience in the greenhouse throughout the classes: "Every day we learn new things, I like the greenhouse because I learn to sow a seed and see the fruits".
Anderson 5 years old, student of nursery school, "I like agriculture, because when I grow up I want to be an expert and plant many trees and plants to eat." In Amún Shéa we build knowledge from childhood, aware of the need to educate in values that promote the care of natural resources.
We thank you for your contribution and we hope to continue opening opportunities for boys and girls, men and women, with your support to education in the northern area of the department of Morazán, El Salvador.
By Katty Ramirez | Project Leader
By Ron Brenneman | Project Leader
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