Eight Years of Growth: How Lupila Fema Club Transformed School Farming
In 2018, the Fema Club at Lupila Secondary School in the Njombe Region launched a school garden project after Adolfu Christopher Kilumbe proposed planting avocados during a Fema Club meeting.
With full leadership support and their mentor’s encouragement, students secured a plot of land from the school, which was granted without hesitation. They worked together to dig thirty holes, enrich them with compost, and plant grafted avocado seedlings all under the guidance of the ward agricultural officer.
The project started during the rainy season, the seedlings were naturally watered at first, and afterward, club members took responsibility for regular irrigation. To protect the young plants, they build a fence to keep hungry animals like goats and cows away.
Three years later, their efforts bore fruit literally as the avocado trees began flowering and yielding harvests. Now, eight years into the initiative, the garden thrives. The avocado harvest not only nourishes club members and student community but is also intended to be sold to generate income and sustain the project.
Parallel to the avocado trees, the club used funds from its Fema-run salon to revive the struggling vegetable garden. They purchased seeds for cabbage, spinach, and onions along with fertilizers and pesticides.
This financial boost improved yields significantly, and the fresh produce is now integrated into school meals, benefiting the entire student community.
Through these combined efforts, club members have gained hands on education in horticulture and entrepreneurship. Their success underscores the power of collaboration with each other, their mentor, the school administration, and agricultural officers and promotes food security, youths practical learning, entrepreneurial skills and future economic opportunity.