Two neighboring schools St. Peter's & Paul's and St. Angeline are being trained and equipped to design, build and maintain a community food garden and tree nursery for mangrove restoration using permaculture techniques. A group of local businesses (The Bangladesh Business Network) will support the program by helping to provide labor and purchasing produce from the garden using a community currency (Bangla-Pesa) that can also be used for paying school fees and for local goods and services. The sustainability of the program comes from its ownership by the schools and integration into a larger network of businesses, schools and parents using a community currency called Bangla-Pesa. One of the challenges of community currencies is that they depend on backing of local goods and services. If all vegetables come from outside the community this limits currency circulation. Hence developing a good garden is a great import replacing business that drastically reduces the transport needed for distribution. This Monday and Tuesday the community held a ground breaking ceremony and begun digging swales to prevent erosion. These swales will be filled with manure and grass and let to compost until school restarts in January - when roof water catchment will be installed and the garden will be sewn with nutritious vegetables. The community will also be reforesting a mangrove forest at the base of the schools. We hope this model of community school garden will be a great success and replicated in all our community currencies. We greatly appreciate all the support for this program from the Permaculture International Public Fund based in Australia.
