City launches urban gardening project

The City Government on Wednesday, February 28, launched the fourth phase of the Urban Container Household Gardening (UCHG), an inter-agency effort aimed at adopting organic farming methods in urban areas.

The relaunched project now targets some 400 beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of barangays 1 to 40, Camaman-an, Consolacion, Macabalan, and Nazareth.

The program urges residents to plant vegetables in their backyard. The city has allocated P400,000 for the project.

This time, the city has tapped the Technical Education and Skills Authority (Tesda), Department of Education (DepEd), and the Ayala Foundation, among others to help train the beneficiaries on household waste segregation, and how these can be actually used for their gardening.

Julius Pamisa, City Social Welfare and Development's (CSWD) Division head for Community and Social Development said winners of the search will get P15,000 as first prize, P15,000 and P5,000 for the second and third place respectively.

An agricultural project, the urban container gardening wants to combat the rising problem of malnutrition, poverty, and high drop-out rates among school-age children in the city. Impoverished families in at-risk communities are taught to feed themselves by planting their own vegetables with their own, sometimes limited, space. The program is also used as a cash-for-work program for the Marawi internally displaced persons.

The project bagged an international award in 2016 when it won third place in the Food Justice category of the 2016 International Network for Urban Agriculture (INUAg) Awards. The Food Justice category commends agricultural projects that improve food access in impoverished communities.

Pamisa said the first and second year of the project implementation had over 400 grantees. Aside from the training them on the ways to grow vegetables in their backyard, the beneficiaries will also be trained to market their urban gardening produce.

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