Rural schools provide a home away from home

What does a kitchen garden mean to children in a rural primary school in China?

To Yang Peng, it makes a school feel like home.

Yang is principal of a primary boarding school that has 360 students in Heping, Sanjiang Dong autonomous county, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. One in every five students is a "left-behind" child, whose parents are migrant workers in cities far from home.

As the Ministry of Education and the United Nations Children's Fund have been jointly carrying out the Whole School Environment Improvement Project across the country, positive changes have taken place, making students such as Yang's feel less lonely at being parted from their parents.

In the garden at Heping Primary School vines wind their way up the fence and one can see melons and passion fruits, while garden tools sprinkle water. The area has become a playground for the students.

The idea of having a vegetable garden came to Yang when the school joined the Campaign to Build a Beautiful School, an extension of the Whole School Environment Improvement Project.

In 2016, Yang rented a piece of wasteland from a farmer for 1,500 yuan ($212) a year.

"I told him that it would be better for me to make it into a vegetable garden. The students would be happy and he would make some profit, too," he said.

Each class has its own vegetable plot, and the students have a weekly session led by their head teacher.

"The kitchen garden not only helps them to understand farm culture, but also makes their school life more fun," Yang said, adding that the students are not only interested in the class, but also in the crops they plant. They often visit in their spare time to see how their crops are doing.