With the end of school, one in three families (36%) start the hunt for summer camps for their children. In Puglia, to meet these needs, the offer of ‘agricolonies’ is growing, with around 300 educational farms ready to offer activities for children and teenagers. It was taken over by Coldiretti Puglia.
According to a Coldiretti/Ixè survey, among those who are not interested in summer camps, around 28% have the possibility of having their children stay with someone else in the family, especially grandparents (28%), but there is also a 13 % who give up for economic reasons while another 5% don’t even try due to the scarcity of the offer compared to the needs of families.
At the top of the ranking of the most popular “colonies” are those by the sea, preferred by 40% of users, while in second place is the countryside (19%), which precedes cities and mountains. An exploit favored by the growth of the phenomenon of educational farms, farms that offer children and teenagers activities in contact with nature. According to Coldiretti’s analysis, there are three thousand active on the national territory, where it is possible to hold cooking and food processing workshops, participate in seasonal agricultural activities, practice artistic activities through the use of natural or recycled materials, learn to recognize plants aromatic or the various types of honey.
To help the entire school system and families to better feed the young generations and the entire family unit, for years the Friendly Countryside Education Project has facilitated the meeting between children and agricultural products ‘made’ by farmers. In Puglia in the last 10 years – reports Coldiretti Puglia – 200 thousand children and 480 schools have been involved in the educational farms project, of which 70% in the age group between 4 and 11 years, from nursery to primary school and 30% older middle and high school students.
On educational farms – explains the regional Coldiretti – you learn “by doing”, through practical activities and direct experiences such as sowing, harvesting, transforming, manipulating and creating. The activities proposed by the companies are many, ranging from the bio painter’s laboratory to paint with colors extracted from leaves, flowers and vegetables to that of the baby chefs where you can learn to cook while saving money up to that of the more expert ones where you can train your senses of smell , taste, touch and sight and learn to recognize aromatic plants or taste the different types of honey. Educational farms can play a fundamental role – highlights the regional Coldiretti – in supporting families and parents, in particular mothers, with the end of school lessons and in order to offer educational services with particular attention to the psycho-physical well-being of children and boys. For this reason, Coldiretti makes its network of Educational Farms, its experience, its skills in the educational and didactic field and its outdoor spaces and classrooms available to the competent health, political and administrative authorities to offer support to parents and to the children.
