THE GREAT Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature and it will never fail you.” Wright was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.
Just thinking out loud, Wright’s philosophy is possibly one of the many motivations of Raymundo “Gray” Timbol, past-president of Rotary Club Angeles Kuliat and current president of the Children’s Home of Eucharistic Love and Kindness (CHELK), to hatch and propagate the Green Youth Army (GYA).
As the Director-General, Timbol narrates that the GYA was established in 2018 under the program of the Rotary Club of Angeles Kuliat District 3790 and Rotary Club of West Icheon District 3600 South Korea. The maiden project of the GYA is the Greenhouse at Tinajero High School, Sta Lucia Resettlement, Magalang, Pampanga which aims to propagate the “Plant Food in Every Home” Program by mentoring senior high school students in public schools, in partnership with parents and teachers, as frontliners of our food security. The GYA has also been officially recognized as a school organization by the Department of Education.
The mission in establishing this program is to educate the younger generation on how to revolutionize sustainable projects by planting and distributing vegetable seedlings in schools, non-school based, and grass roots level. It is a form of synchronizing the ideas, skills and technologies from school to the barangay, and teaching them to learn more on modern technology in farming and planting being launched and developed rapidly in our neighboring countries in South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand and even Singapore. Singapore’s land mass is lean and controlled in contrast to the Philippines, but they can propagate vertical farming in a limited environment, they can optimize plant growth, and they can use soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics. Timbol stressed that this concept is timely amid the COVID-19 pandemic because it improves food production and security, nutrition, cushions climate change impacts, lowers stress and encourages every household to make their own vegetable garden and produce that is safe, healthy and nutritious.
It is worthy to note that with the collaborative alliance of the Rotary Club of Angeles Kuliat, Rotary Club of West Icheon South Korea, Undersecretary Evelyn Lavina for High Value Crops Development Program (HVCP) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) with Gerard Aranas, Jose Jeffrey Rodriguez, and Engr. AB Pangilinan-David, the GYA program unfurled into more additional six public high schools in Pampanga —Camachiles National High School in Mabalacat City, Porac Model Community High School, San Basilio High School, Sta Rita, San Juan Banio High School, Arayat, Northville High School, City of San Fernando, and Remigido Bondoc High School, San Luis— another four target areas in Pampanga and Tarlac are calendared for installation this month.
According to Gerard Aranas of the DA-HVCP, with the great gains reaped by the GYA they intend to create 25 Green Youth Army chapters in Luzon, and to replicate its concept in Visayas and Mindanao.