Post courtesy of Melanie – she wrote it so much better than I could have!!
Day 1 of our service project. We learned that a lot of the rural schools in Thailand don’t get enough government money to support their school lunch programs. SEEC (the company we’re working with) have developed a program to build mushroom houses and raised garden beds at schools to help the students to grow their own food. The idea is that they learn to grow oyster mushrooms, which provide nutritional value, and then whatever mushrooms they don’t eat can be sold and schools can use the money for whatever they need. So far, schools have used that money to supplement their lunch program, buy school supplies and even hire another teacher. Ideally, they will also use a little of the money to purchase more gardening supplies so that the program can be sustainable for the future.
We spent today at an elementary school making the mushroom bags that will be stored in a hut called the mushroom house so they can stay dark and moist, the conditions the spores need to germinate. The bags contain saw dust as a growth medium plus rice bran (from rice husk waste), calcium phosphate, magnesium, and a solution of molasses plus water. We mixed piles of the saw dust and nutrients and then filled bags and topped them with a special cap. The AHS and Thai students worked together on the project so that the Thai students learn the process that they will use again in the future.
All of the kids, big and little, had a blast! They practiced each other’s languages, worked side-by-side and played lots of playground games at recess. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the same school to build the mushroom house for the bags and some raised garden beds. Once they get going, the mushroom bags will produce mushrooms every day for about five months and the same bags can be used for up to 2 years. After they’re all used up, the growth medium is used as compost in the garden beds so they can grow different vegetables for their lunches.
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I don’t have a ton of pics for this day because most of them have students’ faces. I’ll try to get better pics tomorrow!
It looks like a giant cutworm larvae! Run! I’d like to grow mushrooms…