About Us
We aim to create a student garden. The garden will be managed entirely by APU students, with input from the local community and other people who have been working with sustainable agriculture.
The members of this organization will have the opportunity to learn about farming methods from Beppu citizens, as well as from practitioners of a sustainable lifestyle. We will achieve this by two methods. First, we connect students to experts, using our personal connections as well as research. For instance, we can invite guest lecturers, or we can organize study trips. Second, we will organize study groups to learn from books or other materials. For instance, we can learn about 自然農法, or natural farming, from the books written by Masanobu Fukuoka.
Then, the members of this organization will implement what they have learned to grow a variety of vegetables and plants in the garden. We value experimentation and creativity, so the members are free to discuss and choose how and what they want to plant. We also want to recruit volunteers who want to work with us for short periods. To facilitate cultural exchange, we also plan to organize activities where local people and APU students work together in our garden.
Besides farming activities, we also aim to provide a space for members to share any opportunities or personal experience related to sustainable agriculture with each other. From this, we hope that we can connect like-minded individuals, and heighten the environmental consciousness and awareness of organic food culture of everyone involved in our activities.
At last most importantly, for solving the loss of culture, we will provide the space for anyone who wants to share the cultures and experience to raise awareness of people and think up a new solution to preserve culture, and create a new style of culture by being inspired by other cultures.
In short;
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Building a community according to the concept described above
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Connecting various stakeholders in supporting our project (fundings):
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Find a plot of land in Beppu to farm on. Hands on experience on the Community Garden through trial and errors
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Reflecting and improving on the idea of what sustainable and organic farming is
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Activities besides farming: Holding local exchange event (BBQ party, hands-on farming experience, etc.), conducting study group, organizing field trips
