Student creates indoor garden in UAE

Maha Gargash, an IB student at Universal American School (UAS), Dubai, took one of her school’s indoor gardens home to conduct research into food and water security as her Internal Assessment (IA) for Science. Maha followed our ‘Growing Our Garden’ instructional module and shared her perspectives with our Head of Education & Community to inspire other UAE youth. Read on to see the Sustainable Futures program in action!

"Growing up in the UAE I’ve always been super interested in how we’re a desert region with high food security. I would always think about this. When me and my mum would go to Masafi, which is close to Fujairah, and they would have these wide views… And over time I’d see how their agriculture would start to deplete, and I wondered if this was the influence of lack of water there because of the heat and because we’re a desert region. So that’s what kind of triggered it – when I went back around two months ago it triggered my want to understand the influence of water in our agricultural systems and how the UAE can have high food security with this amount of water. I also realized that the UAE depends on imports for a lot of our food. Because food is an essential item, this is a really unsustainable way to live – especially since countries can fall out, which could lead to chaos with our food system."

Read the complete article at www.madarfarms.co.