Sekolah Mama Berkebun (SMB) is an informal school for women farmers who live in 5 villages, namely Lesluru, Trana, Jerili, Kuralele, and Waru in Teon Nila Serua, Central Maluku. This school was created to get women farmers hands-on agricultural practices.
Mama-mama in SMB had received training on good agricultural practices (GAP) with the assistance of our Technical Field Officer, Paschalis. They were able to select crops’ branches, prune, and pollinate non-seed watermelon crops. Not only that, they were even able to produce 2 watermelons of the same weight as sweet fruits.
Sekolah mama Berkebun (SMB) has 200 members with 15 active members that maintain and take care of the demo farm plot. SMB has a simple classroom and a 1,03 productive field. The group routine activities are weekly training sessions that were held by the field officer of Yayasan Bina Tani Sejahtera and taking care of the field with a pre-designated schedule.
“Nowadays, mama-mama have new activities in the field that add value to their household. They can get more income and food through those activities” Said bishop Pieter Ursia, who is also the leader of SMB.
Activities of planting crops were a series of ‘Mari Menanam dan Mengkonsumsi Sayuran (Let’s Plant and Eat Vegetables)’ expo that were aimed to raise both farmer skills and the rate of vegetable consumption in the village.
