Farm the City Erasmus Project

Project Title

Farm the City

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

Project Summary

The number of people living in urban areas is always on the increase and the countries involved in this project are no exception. Malta, Romania and Turkey are experiencing extensive urbanization resulting in young people becoming more detached from nature, agricultural land and farming. Young people are accustomed to buy their foods from supermarkets where everything is packaged and ready for use. Few young people have the possibility and knowledge to grow their own crops also because the spaces they live in do not allow this. This may also result in consuming food that we have no information on its origin, might have travelled long distances to reach us and has also been treated to remain fresh. This calls for a greater push towards the farm-to-fork concept. Indeed, the main objective of our project ‘Farm the City’ was to increase the knowledge of skills of students and young people aged between 11 and 13 on how to make use of places, even if small, in their home and classrooms to grow their own crops, herbs and other vegetation and how to carry out other basic agriculture skills.

The project was carried out over a span of 15 months and targeted directly 5000 students and young people. For this reason, Prisms partnered up with the MCAST Institute of Applied Science – Centre for Agriculture, Aquatics and Animal Science and Maria Regina College in Malta, Arsuz Governorship in Turkey and Dr. Safran School and the Association for Education and Training in Romania. In order to reach out more people beyond our partnership, the project had a number of associated partners as well among which Majjistral Action Group, Koperattiva Rurali Manikata and the Municipality of Bacau. This extended the reach of our project to potentially 150,000 persons.

The project involved the creation of an interactive and engaging website and mobile app. These contained a number of video tutorials and has the possibility of further uploads. The project involved a multiplier event in each country to launch the project, the website and the app. An important feature and outcome of the project was the competition that was launched in which students and young people were asked to upload videos and/or photos in relation to this project. In order to carry out these activities effectively and efficiently and to reach the envisaged outputs we have implemented the project in 3 phases.

The carrying out of these phases led to the project’s expected overarching result; that the students and young people became aware that they can use urban spaces to grow their own crops. Additionally, the students learnt how to pot crops, received basic soil information, when to plant seeds and when to harvest among other skills. This increased their environmental awareness. Students became aware that if they want to, they can choose to further their studies and take agriculture as their future career path. In all the countries involved farmers are concerned because their profession is dying out due to lack of interest from their immediate families and the general public. Farming is wrongly perceived as a job of a lesser quality.

It is for these reasons that the biggest impact of this project was on the participants who are the young people and students between the ages of 11 and 13. These were also our main target group. The sessions that were carried out in schools and in the after school programmes directly impacted the participants by equipping them with agricultural skills. This project further aided the participant organisations in reaching their aims and objectives. We believe that our strategic partnership supported innovation and partnership between the different organisations positively impacted all partners in their respective areas of work, from the local or regional via the national right up to the European level.

The partners, in different ways, had already started to promote sustainability, urban farming and environmental consciousness. This project gave them the possibility and the tools to do so on a bigger scale and by roping in other relevant stakeholders from both the public sector and the private sector. This aims to establish long-term collaborations and to give the project sustainability and to continue farming the city even after the funding period. Indeed, to ensure the project’s sustainability we roped in the private sector from the early stages of the project. This complemented our efforts to reach a wider audience beyond the participants who were directly involved in this project through the website and a mobile app that were developed and designed to reach different audiences and which is free to use.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 69912 Eur

Project Coordinator

PRISMS & Country: MT

Project Partners

• MALTA COLLEGE OF ARTS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
• KULLEGG MARIA REGINA
• Scoala Gimnaziala “Dr. Alexandru Safran”
• ARSUZ KAYMAKAMLIGI
• Asociatia pentru Educatie si Formare