After I completed a Diploma Course in Social Development at the Coady International Institute last December 2013, I coached my sister Michelle Frances to compete in the national Ten Accomplished Youth Organizations (TAYO) in the Philippines. The question is our minds, is, “what particular project we will send as an entry? For the recent competition which is TAYO 11, the ALEY-NM has 2 main current projects, an eco-life internet hub which is a venue for the youth to learn the internet and gather data for their pet projects, and, urban gardening using available resources around the house. The internet hub is operational in Initao, Misamis Oriental and a branch in Turno, Dipolog City. Our urban gardening project is active in the cities of Dipolog and Dapitan. We decided to chose as an entry our urban gardening project, mainly because it is close to our hearts having parents who are small farmers (and NGO leaders) and because we think our approach in urban gardening best embodies the TAYO ideals of generating impact to the stakeholders, able to harness the spirit of volunteerism, creativity and innovation, sustainability and effective use of resources. The impact generation is because most of poor urban youths have nothing to do and maintaining vegetable gardens means income and improved nutrition for them. People should realize that gardening is fun and recyclable resources around the house can be used to start one. Filipinos according to the Food and Nutrition Research Council also suffers from what is called “hidden hunger” or the lack of micro-nutrients in the diet and eating vegetables can help solve this. In terms of the ability to harness the spirit of volunteerism especially among the youth, we made it a point to recruit and train volunteer youth promoters who go from communities to communities to recruit other youths to start gardening activities. In terms of creativity and innovation, we promote what is called hydrophonics or soil-less gardening, which means that the roots of the plants get the fertilizer directly from the water-based fertilizer solution. Another innovation we already mentioned is the use of recycled materials such as sacks and containers as garden materials and collecting organic matter in the house as fertilizer. In terms of sustainability and effective use of resources, we focus on the use of open-pollinated seed varieties which can be matured and re-use again for the next planting season. In this way, the youth is not dependent on seed companies but is able to sustain their initiative. We encouraged them also to start small-scale vegetable processing activities and sell their organic vegetable menus and products to neighbourhood markets. The rest is history! We are one of the winners for this year’s TAYO Awards! Our insights in joining the TAYO awards are the following; a. It is great to be a youth and to be able to help our communities with small but impactful project. Now we are gearing to implement the ideas of urban gardening in Leyte Province among Typhoon Yolanda survivors there. With food aid dwindling, the survivors will be facing famine and starvation and our approach can yet be of big help to them. b. The award aside from the perks is a “pump primer” of sorts, giving much visibility to our advocacy in a way not achievable by just any award. It is national in scope and the TAYO is the only award winning initiative in the country today that focuses on the youth. c. We came to realize that our country is very rich with youth leaders and youth organizations that are able to make change happen despite the troubling and bad news we always receive about our country and what is happening around.
