"OrtoMobile" - micro gardens in boxes

Area characterisation:

Schools in South Mirafiori district are suffering from decreasing number of students. More well-off families tend to enroll their children in schools nearer to the city center. As a consequence, a high percentage of children in Mirafiori schools come from economically and socially disadvantaged families.

The easy to implement OrtoMobile gardens for all ages have been installed in six schools of the Mirafiori Sud district, promoting social interaction, both in classrooms and at home. Strong collaborative attitudes enable co-implementation of simple and effective installations of indoor and outdoor areas in schools.

Istituto Comprensivo. „A. Cairoli
Istituto Comprensivo. „G. Salvemini“
Scuola Paritaria, Margherita Mirafiori
Primary School “Carlo Collodi
Scuola Engim San Luca
Istituto Superiore Primo Levi

Objective:

The objectives and goals of the educational activities can be summarized as follows:

promote the active role of the local educational system during the proGIreg project by consolidating active co-planning processes of school communities to provide continuity of the learning experience
schools serving as a point of reference on environmental, cultural and socio-economic issues related to the concept of Green Cities.
support the development of co-design processes
define management models of NbS foreseen in the project by evaluating the possible activation of Collaboration Pacts stipulated by the Regulation of Common Goods adopted by the City of Turin.
enhance educational projects already active in the area and support the creation of initiatives, which care for the local territory and seek improvements to its green infrastructure system.
identify and establish links and collaboration opportunities with local partners.
create continuous relationships over the duration of the project with the local committee of school activity in Mirafiori Sud.

Actions:

Planning and preparatory activities (administrative and technical procedures)

The „Community school gardens“ activity is the result of ITER‘s experience gained over the years with schools in Turin and developed over three years with the „Slow Food“ association, allowing for a consolidation of intervention methodologies and techniques. The methodology of involving school communities on green issues has been redesigned by proGIReg and shared with the schools involved.

Co-design and engagement activities

ITER proposes a training course dedicated to high school students aimed at creating and caring for a community school garden in the schoolyard. The co-design phase entails the defining activities with the school representatives followed by a workshop with involved students.
The second phase of student involvement included a series of workshops focused on issues addressed in proGIreg: environmental monitoring, „new soil“, green solutions (NbS).
The third phase foresees a practical training of the student groups on two different actions:

learning laboratory aimed at realizing and monitoring a community school garden
laboratory focused on the management of sensors of environmental data collection provided by proGIreg.

The monitoring phase has been carried out by involving the entire community: teachers, students, experts, stakeholders, through direct observation, questionnaires and interviews.

To manage the co-implementation phase, the school community signed a „pact of collaboration“ that defined the management and development of the experience, guaranteeing the children’s engagement.

Potential impacts/benefits:

This NbS has successfully modeled schools acting as a Civic Centre in the Mirafiori district: a public structure open to the neighborhood, recognized as a territorial hub to develop dissemination/training activities on Green City issues. Key achievements are balanced between practical and educational results as follows:

Creating environmental awareness in a community of young people active in proGIreg
Active involvement of 30 pre-school and primary school teachers and 8 high school teachers
Active involvement of 556 students: 462 from nursery schools, 94 from primary school,
More than 100 students from the three years of high school

The NbS „Micro gardens in schools“ support the creation of collective urban gardens with social and ethical motives by engaging children, adolescents and other citizens to appropriate public spaces. Hence, contributing to social cohesion while creating accessible green spaces and providing plant food for pollinating insects.

NbS benefits