The project aims to strengthen citizen participation in terms of environmental sustainability in Valladolid, generating connections between the women participating in the municipal urban gardens and the students of primary schools through the implementation or revaluation of school gardens.
The planned activities are the systematization of experiences from the leading role of horticultural women, training and accompaniment of students and teachers.

In the outskirts of Valladolid, Castilla y León (Spain)

Valladolid is a city of lesser than 300,000 inhabitants. Its population in recent decades has decreased and it has a high rate of aging. Population movements on the rise have been achieved mainly by the migratory movements of families who have decided to live in Valladolid. The municipal gardens promoted by the Valladolid City Council (the entity that manages this project) are aimed at the population over 60 years of age and the unemployed. Many of them are women and of diverse origins and cultures. The orchards in addition to promoting local consumption and environmental sustainability favor the empowerment of women and their citizen participation. They are an element of social cohesion quite unknown to the students of educational centers.

The women involved in the municipal organic gardens reside in Valladolid and make up a diverse group in terms of age and place of origin (within Spain and third countries). This provides a wide range of opinions and visions that enrich the cultivation of the gardens and the collective social cohesion that emerges with coexistence in the gardens themselves.
The systematization process developed by the InteRed staff integrates intercultural and gender activities to support the women who are part of the orchards, to promote the transfer of their knowledge to educational centers through stories, games or other awareness-raising activities with the students.
This systematization also includes accompaniment in educational centers for the creation and revaluation of vegetable gardens in schools

Meeting with the Environmental and Social Services Department of the Valladolid City Council to contact the participants of the municipal gardens
Advice from the National Institute of Adult Education to assess the crops in the orchards.
Study of contributions and links of the municipal garden program with the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Systematization of women's crops with circles of democratic participation (debates and collective decisions for active citizenship). Critical and collaborative methodologies to analyze reality with the aim of transforming it
The actions with educational centers will be linked to sustainable development, promoting more respectful relationships with the environment and the approach of other cultures

The aim is to strengthen active citizenship in terms of environmental sustainability in Valladolid, generating connections between diverse groups.
The aim is to achieve the enhancement of the knowledge and experiences of women, especially older women and women from other cultures, through cultivation and their local environmental contribution and citizen participation.
It is intended to promote the commitment of the primary educational community of Valladolid in environmental sustainability and in the construction of a more inclusive society.

Recognizing women who have participated or are participating in municipal organic gardens as agro-urban agents, strengthens the exercise of global citizenship and contributes to community activation.
The relevance of their narratives, knowledge and experiences, generated and systematized in a collective, participatory and alliance way with the project; It is an environmental training contribution that unites different perspectives, due to its intergenerational, intercultural, intersectional and gender structure.
The systematization of an experience is a process of reconstruction of what has been lived from its protagonists, in this case women horticultures, which will serve to extract learning from citizen participation and social cohesion shared with educational centers.

It has always been time to show the importance of citizen decision-making in their territories. But this situation is accentuated more in the face of the current crisis of COVID-19, which accuses of territorial, gender, age, economic and other inequalities that are more noticeable at the local level
Given this, it is time to reactivate the entire field of civic participation, since the citizenry is the one who knows the territory best and therefore contains the tools and capacities to develop it in a democratic way
To guarantee that every decision has an impact on the common good, it is urgent to reinforce the tools and spaces for citizen participation that favor cohesion, and this time, recognizing the knowledge and impact of those who, with their environmental actions, seek environment

Direct costs:
Staff: 28,000€
Travel and transportation (target population visits): 2,000€
Technical services-visual record systematization: 12,000€
Supplies for the creation of school gardens: 2,000€
Indirect costs (planning, management, monitoring, administrative expenses): 4,000 €

An SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) about our project and the know-how about other experiences to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable , by Sustainable Development Goal 11.