Community garden of the DIST Shopping Park project as a partner in the generation of income, food security and community environmental education

Abstract

The community gardens are created with the purpose of offering a better quality on food offered to the population involved, and also to develop the community empowerment, to create solidarity and cooperation bonds between individuals and for the enhancement of strategies of social and productive inclusion. In that context, the community garden workshop was created in the project DIST – Shopping Park with the object of achieving the insertion of domestic advisory services and rehabilitation of lands, offering a possibility of income and reinsertion in society for people at risk. The main activity realized was the installation of a mandala garden at School Municipal “Maria Euvira Sabbag”, in Uberlândia, State of Minas Gerais, using the methodology developed by the workshop teacher and her students, gathering the scientific and empirical knowledge. With the installation and consequent garden production, it was possible to perform the proximity of children’s education students with organic food production, providing teaching activities, allowing to increase the knowledge about farming and garden management, reaching the purpose to establish a new human – nature relationship, revealing creative forms of observation, interaction with the environment and forming opinion and own postures that lead to action.