Teaching the children of Lavender Hill about Lavender
On the 7th of July we hosted our 8th lavender education session at Hillwood Primary in Lavender Hill.
Around 50 children learnt all about the healing benefits of lavender and how they can use it in their own homes for medicinal purposes, relaxation and to make products.
After getting all the theory out of the way, the kids were taught how to make lavender cuttings (the baby from which a lavender plant will grow). The next half hour was spent getting their hands dirty as they created their own cuttings and planted them into yogurt tubs. Each child got to take their little lavender plants home to grow and look after at home.
The aims of our education sessions and the handing out of plants are to uplift the community members of Lavender Hill in the following ways:
Pride instillation: Plants give beauty - when your surrounding is beautiful you feel beautiful.
Responsibility creation: Learning responsibility by growing a plant and looking after a plant. In many rehabilitation centres across the world patients are encouraged to learn responsibility by caring for a plant.
Sensitivity instillation: In a community where men, woman, boys and girls are forced to become desensitised to survive, plants and the act of caring for them bring back gentleness and kindness into people’s lives.
Enterprise development and skills training: If people successfully look after their plants and cultivate them they can start their own little business of selling lavender plants or lavender products with the skills that have been taught to them.
After a session of getting down and dirty, the kids walked home, each carrying their little lavender plants with pride.
