Lincoln University helping Jamaican farming

Lincoln University is helping an organization help students in Jamaica and South Africa learn how to improve their agriculture skills.

And those improvements can help their futures by producing organic foods for a growing market.

Brenda Isaac, president and founder of the Atlanta-based One Love Learning Foundation, told LU's curators last week she's grateful for the help Lincoln already has given, and she looks forward to working with the school and its leaders.

"We have a program where we are empowering youth in organic farming, along with an arts and music program," she explained. "I have a 17-acre estate in Jamaica - seven of those acres are designated to our learning center, and the learning center is a facility where we bring both the community and our students to our facility to learn about organic farming agriculture.

"We do environmental awareness through stewardship of the earth. And we also encourage our students to participate in community service."

In Jamaica, Isaac told the News Tribune after Thursday's curators meeting, "We're specific in delivering (to the hotels) kale, arugula and exotic herbs that aren't typically grown in Jamaica, like cilantro and parsley.

"All those items are typically imported - and they're not organic."

So, she said, her program has "a real niche now" that provides food the hospitality industry wants, raising money to help teach the agriculture and marketing skills her students need.

"Lincoln is helping us through their education program," Isaac said, noting she was in Jefferson City while one of her former students - now a farm manager - also was visiting LU, "going from farm to farm to farm" so he can "take this information back to Jamaica and teach the other students."

Isaac added: "Our ultimate goal is that Lincoln will have a research center on our farm, our property, with a facility for four dormitories, so that we can keep this exchange going back and forth."

LU President Kevin Rome told the board: "Our goal is to build a facility that will provide research and training opportunities for our students and faculty."

Isaac's program's been operating only about 18 months.

"The relationship between the One Love Foundation and Lincoln University has been extremely beneficial," she said in an interview. "Our students have the labor mentality for farming, but they don't have the knowledge from an organic perspective, and we're really in an organic movement in Jamaica.

"There's a lot of farmers who are wanting to do organic both for exporting - and we have currently a couple of five-star hotels, with five-star chefs, (and) we are currently serving those hotels from our farm that our students are farming."

On its website, the foundation explains its mission: "The children served by the our programs grow up in poverty, where the most common role models are athletes and entertainers, or drug dealers, gang leaders, and criminals.

"Neither extreme presents positive and realistic life choices for the children to emulate. The One Love Learning Foundation seeks to open up a whole new world to these children, feeding them in body, mind and soul through gardening, cultural exchange, and arts programs."

Jamaica is the Caribbean's fourth largest island. At 4,244 square miles, it is larger than Delaware, the United States' second smallest state, but smaller than Connecticut, the third-smallest U.S. state.

At about 2.95 million people, Jamaica has the Caribbean's fourth largest population, as well.

By comparison, Missouri covers 69,709 square miles - almost 16.5 times as large - and has nearly 6.1 million people.

But Jamaica's per capita income is just a little more than $5,600 a year.

Isaac said: "Our students don't have access to further education. We put our program into primary schools so that we get the students when they are very young, and we teach them organic farming and African drum and dance.

"And then, in South Africa, we do the same thing - and then we connect the students (through Skype), and they share information with one another. That program's called 'Each One Teach One.'"

Isaac said the programs are a bit different.

"We don't have a learning center (in South Africa) - we're in one school" in a town near Cape Town, she explained. "We've built a huge, huge organic garden. The purpose there is to feed, versus teaching.

Our students there - their literacy and numeracy rates have increased by 42 percent from (better) nourishment."

In South Africa, she said: "The purpose and intent is to feed the body.

"In Jamaica, we're nurturing the soul - and we're really embracing the fact that we have this institution (LU) that's willing to jump on board, come down there, give us the knowledge that we don't have."

Rome told curators he met Isaac about three years ago and has visited her Jamaican facility.

"It's all about sustainability and economic viability for a very impoverished group of people that Lincoln University could have a huge impact on," he said. "We've planted gardens at a few elementary schools. We've sent students and faculty over.

"We've met with the minister of Education in Jamaica and the minister of Agriculture - (and) we hope to take a couple of curators over to see the work that we're doing, so you can see the impact that we could have on Jamaica."

Rome said the program's important to LU "because of our relationship with the Jamaican students that we have, who've had such a profound impact on our institution. So I believe, we have an obligation to give back something to a country that's given us so much."

He added Lincoln has "a significant number of students who come from Jamaica," and "many of these students are scholars, and they do very well academically.

"They graduate in the top of the class, and so they contribute to the academic environment to the campus."

Many choose to stay in the Jefferson City area after graduation, Rome said.

Link:

www.lincolnu.edu