For one little girl at Lightning Reef Primary School in North Bendigo, a gardening program, with the added bonus of chicken ‘cuddling’, changed her outlook on school attendance and illustrated the difference Rotarians’.
If you have ever wondered about the difference being a Rotarian can make, then being part of Rotary Bendigo Sandhurst’s children’s gardening program at Lightning Reef Primary School in North Bendigo could be your answer; on a Wednesday afternoon (before lock down), it was mine! (Lightning Reef Primary School services an area where many parents face barriers to employment and where nearly one third of the school community is from the Karen ethnic minority group, which has a very strong post-refugee community in Bendigo).
For a very busy hour, around eight students from Prep to Grade 4 enthusiastically crowd around the raised garden beds wanting to plant, weed, look for bugs, and generally ‘muck in’. A teacher accompanies the group, but generally maintains a background role. We provided biodegradable storage bags for the kids to harvest vegies, a popular part of the session. Enthusiastic ‘harvesting’ of pak choy, silver beet, spring onions, etc. saw the bags brim full of fresh produce, hopefully to make it home for parents to prepare a meal.
The best part of this very involving program (for the kids), comes at the end, when weeds and vegie scraps are given to the chooks in a nearby pen. With the kids running amok in the spacious chook yard, the chooks get a bit flighty, but we manage to catch a few for the kids to hold and pet.
For me, the chook-catching was the best part of the session. The kids of all ages were keen to hold and pet the chooks, some with more trepidation than others. Petting and calming the chooks seemed to calm the kids and to fleetingly establish a special bond with them. The ‘Rotary moment’ for me, occurred when one young girl, let’s call her Sally, wanted to hold and pet a chicken, saying she had never done it before. After a short time petting the chook, Sally said ‘this is so great with the chooks, I think I’ll come to school every day now’. The teacher, standing nearby, said (quietly), ‘That’s a breakthrough, attendance is certainly an issue.
So, if a Rotary gardening program, with a side-serve of chooks, can have such an impact on a child’s perception of the value of school attendance, then that’s a real ‘Rotary moment’ for me. If you have the chance to get involved with a gardening program at a school such as Lightning Reef Primary School, just say ‘yes’. It doesn’t have to be a fortnightly or, monthly commitment, it could just be a few hours at a weekend working bee to set up new vegie beds or do some weeding. You will potentially have the chance to make such a difference to the life of a child!
[Photos of children enjoying working in the garden, and members of Rotary Bendigo Sandhurst participating in a weekend working bee to upgrade facilities at the school garden].