Young Rotarians entice the disabled to try agriculture

The Queen’s College Interact Club in collaboration with Eco Rebel has donated 10 ‘green boxes’ to the Barbados Council for the Disabled, in an effort to get more differently-abled persons interested in agriculture.

During a brief handing over ceremony held Thursday at the council’s headquarters in Harambee House, Garrison St. Michael, Dominique Tudor, founder of Eco Rebel Barbados, told media personnel that the project was part of their Good Green Deed drive, aimed at growing the interest in food security among citizens. 

“What the Good Green Deeds project is really, is an initiative that encourages all persons to play a part in environmental action. We hope to encourage persons living with disabilities, by giving them the tools to make their own home garden, to be able to play a part in not only national food security, but in their own health and wellbeing,” Tudor explained.

The green boxes include various healthy food recipes, products, plants, and gardening tools.

She said the project had an additional aim of encouraging an enterprising mindset among students, particularly in socially-conscious initiatives.

“We hope that this is an initiative that we can continue across Barbados with the club. It’s a very enterprising opportunity because there have been persons who have asked us about purchasing some of these boxes when they saw them put together. Hopefully this is a way that the QC Interact Club and the students can learn about implementing social enterprise models, where you can have a business, but you can actually generate revenue that funds the initiative that is [for] the public good.”     

Alexia Daniel, President of the Queen’s College Interact Club, which is linked to the Rotary Club of Barbados, said that though the initial start date for the project was delayed, she was pleased to see it finally come to fruition. 

“We first had it planned for December, but now we got the chance to do it for April, for tomorrow, World Health Day. It’s just really an initiative to give back to our community as we do as Interactors. Service above self is our motto and we just did it to help others commit to healthy lifestyles.”

Christopher Gilkes, Public Relations Officer for the Barbados Council for the Disabled, thanked the two organisations for their donation to the council.

“As a person with a disability, health is paramount for all of us. As we all know, NCDs are very high, and that is something we have to make sure we bring down, make sure that we eat healthy, to keep ourselves at 100
percent so that we can live to 100 years old and more.”