Last week, we started to draw with the children. Douwe (image), Nina and Stijn joined different groups of children and tasked them with drawing anything related to nature, plants and vegetables. This had multiple purposes.
First of all, it was a good way to get to know the children. Although it was not easy for us to learn all their names, the children could simply shout “uncle” and “auntie” as a way of showing respect and appreciation. Some of the children even learned our names although the pronunciation sometimes causes laughs.
We would want to build a relationship with the children. For our project, it is really important to get to know the children and their needs. The system can be adjusted so that the children can learn from it, but we can also see how the potential profit of the Aquaponics system can be invested into an even better learning environment.
Furthermore, this drawing session gave us some insight into the artistic skills of the children. In the future, we hope to sell jars with pesto and packages of tea produced by the Aquaponics System and labelled with drawings of the children (see the image below). This could provide a second source of income for the Childhood Centre, it will involve the children into the project even more and, on top of that, the customers of our products will get to know where the products are coming from and how the community of Belhar looks like. This is very important for the image of Belhar.
