There were different activities during pandemic done by young people in Wangga village, East Sumba. They chose to farm and join Rinjungu Pahamu, a farmer group. Ten young people joined and learned to manage vegetable garden from cultivating land until the crops harvested and sell them, accompanied by Ningsih Tamu Apu, a young girl who has been sent to Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta in 2014. Ningsih taught them farming techniques that suitable with the soil condition in East Sumba. This learning process has been going on since middle of March, when schools in East Sumba applied learning from home. Their reasons to join this were to fill spare time, reduce daily expense for vegetables and look for extra pocket money. 

 

 

From this garden can be found a variety of vegetables and plants that they had cultivated, such as onion, kale, green mustard, spinach, eggplants and papaya. Each vegetable has a different planting and growing period so that the harvesting time is different. Marketing harvest product has no difficulty because buyers usually come to the garden, look around and choose what vegetables they want to buy and bring to the markets for other consumers. 

 

As we all know, not many young people are interested in farming even though their parents are also farmers. However seeing the situation of young people who want to farm and think about their family needs, I hope they will be enthusiastic to talk about the importance of agriculture and be the agents of change, especially be independent since early age and be able to cultivate land to support their families.

 

Their high enthusiasm, willingness to learn and take care for the plants made me very happy, especially in difficult situations like now, they can help their family to reduce expenses. In addition, the small step they made to optimize their free time ended by learning to care what they planted themselves patiently. It made me excited and have new hopes for a better future.