School tomatoes, apples and nuts: A school in Belarus promotes healthy lifestyle

Medical records from the Davydovskaya school system show that only 22% of the students are completely healthy and 50% of them have problems with their digestive systems.

When the parents were asked about Healthy Lifestyle (HLS), no one associated it with healthy nutrition. That is how the Laboratory of Healthy Nutrition emerged. The team decided to train school children and parents on the principles of healthy lifestyle. It started off with a small initiative: new equipment was purchased for the school, including three combi steamers. The combi steamers can produce both dry and moist heat, and can be used to simultaneously steam vegetables or potatoes quickly and gently. It's a healthy alternative to other types of cooking equipment. Even the French fries served for lunch are cooked based on the steam cooking technology. It’s healthy a way to make French fries! Svetlana Markevich, the director of the Davydovskaya Secondary School, explains: 

"However, we advanced even more, we decided to create an open air laboratory. The two hundred square meters of school territory were used to grow vegetables and fruit. After all, a healthy diet is also about local products."

The lunches at school are free of charge. In some cases, the school meals are healthier and more nutritious than what they are able to receive at home. The school was able to reduce costs by growing their own vegetables. The money they save is used to purchase vegetables and fruits that they cannot grow at the school: for example, oranges and bananas.

The school's plot of land was extended last year: now the school grows potatoes, carrots, beetroot and cabbage. Last year’s harvest was enough for the winter period. In fact, they even had an excess of vegetation and fruits, which they gave to kindergarten students for the summer.

"We also made a greenhouse. We grow seedlings there: tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers," says Svetlana enthusiastically. "We plant the seedlings into the outdoor soil beds. Therefore, the children from the summer camp eat our cucumbers in July and August."

The seedlings are popular among the fellow villagers, some even wanted to buy the seedlings. The director has another idea for a social business project: to increase the production of the seedlings so children can earn money by selling them. Svetlana excitedly announced: 

There are ovaries in the apple tree garden so this year we will eat our apples. Only after the check-up by the sanitary and epidemiological service. We also have raspberry and currant bushes, however, we don’t have the freezers for storage. But, I think, we will soon address this issue.

In the future they will have a nut alley. It is actually already growing. The school hopes that in five years the children will be able to eat walnuts.

Only a section of the land was allocated for production as they have left training soil beds for the labour and biology classes. Primary school children learn to grow onions, and older school pupils grow buckwheat and plants that fight pests.

Laboratory of Healthy Nutrition “ShkolnikAM” is implemented through the UN "Belmed" project  with the support from the EU and in partnership with the Ministry of Health of Belarus and Department for Education, Sports and Tourism of the Svietlahorsk District Executive Committee, Homiel Region.

Produced by UN Belarus. Written by Alexandra Savinich from the UN Development Programme (UNDP). This article was originally published to the Belarus website on 29 August 2020. To learn more about the work being done in the country visit: https://belarus.un.org/.