Children teaching parents

The children attending Malamba Elementary School, an hour’s drive from Davao City, are growing up with landcare. Ninety-five per cent of them are Bagobo indigenous people.

Since November 2007, the elementary school and the adjacent high school have been working with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to bring landcare into the schools.

The children at Malamba have planted fruit trees such as lanzones and rambutan, and a vegetable garden, in the school grounds. They have been taught how to make fertiliser from leaves and decaying matter. And they are starting to influence their parents. They are teaching them not to have the “slash and burn” way of farming.

High school students at Malamba, near Davao City, have grown up with landcare.