Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Ethical living

Discover eco friendly brands and sustainable fashion on our Ethical Living forum.

School Farms anyone?

3 replies

sophy · 01/07/2008 17:05

Posted this under Education but haven't had a response so thought I would try my luck here.

Does anyone's DC have access to a School Farm?

I am hoping to set one up to serve a number of local schools using some council-owned land, and would love to hear others' experience of them.

What's good? What isn't?

How much curriculum time is devoted to them, and does it span the whole curriculum?

Would be particularly interested in hearing from teachers who may have been involved in such projects.

All input gratefully received!

OP posts:
dylsmum1998 · 01/07/2008 19:48

hi i havent had any experience of this but sounds a good idea. i'd love my children to have this oportunity (sp?)

BagelBird · 01/07/2008 20:09

WOW! Sounds fantastic. Hope you get both the funding and practical support to make this happen.
Sorry I have no specific practical experience to offer you. However, having organised several large scale community projects over the years and been on numerous community funding porject courses etc etc, my advice to you is to follow the "ABCD" Project management rules:

A - Activate. Finds ways to get people Actively involved, not just talking about it but actually agreeing to specific action. I imagine this is particularly important if involving a long term commitment involving various schools. This can take a lot of balls to get people who say "oh yes I will help" to getting them to commit to X amount of money or X hours a month etc etc

B - Believe - without self belief and enthusing others to believe in it totally, any project will fail. There will be darker days when it all feels too much and it is preparing yourself for those moments when others will need you to rally everyone around, trouble shoot sticky issues and get all back on track.

C - Communicate - talk, talk and talk some more. Then listen, listen, think about what people say and listen some more! Collect advice from as many wide ranging sources as possible, from listening and talking with the children themselves, to insurance experts, vets, local farmers, charities, media, other project runners - keep lines of communications and various methods of communicating (websites, forums, meetings, noticeboards in communitites, newsletters etc etc) all running.

D- most important one: Delegate. Don?t try to do it all. Allow others to help. Many people find this incredibly hard, especially if the project is their "baby". Having that trust in place to be able to encourage others to take areas of responsibility can be critically important.

All of that is probably rather obvious stuff but some of it took me several projects and a few harsh lessons to learn and appreciate the ABCD code for myself. Hope it helps a little! Good luck

sophy · 01/07/2008 20:37

Sounds like great advice, thanks.
Particularly the bit about delegating, which I know I will find difficult.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread