International gathering on educational gardens, microbiome and AMR

2026-06-24

For three days, Cuenca became a meeting space for academia, social organizations, public institutions, communities, agricultural producers, university students, teachers, children, youth, and older adults from Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. Bringing together diverse backgrounds and experiences, participants shared knowledge, reflections, and proposals centered around the educational garden as a space to learn about the microbial world and its relationship with soil, food, and health.

The gathering was organized by ReAct Latinoamérica, the Niño a Niño (Child-to-Child) Foundation, and the Parochial GAD of Nulti.

It proposed a journey through three thematic pillars:

• educational gardens as living learning laboratories
• the relationship between living earth, food, the microbiome, and health
• and the garden in the care of the first thousand days of life.

The first two days of the meeting were dedicated to reflection and the exchange of experiences regarding the interrelationships between these thematic pathways through lectures, knowledge dialogues, and experiences from different territories. This process was complemented by the creative exhibition “Semillas de vida: experiencias que nacen del territorio” (Seeds of Life: Experiences Born from the Territory), a space where organizations, communities, and institutions shared initiatives linked to sustainable production practices and community gardens. During the second day, reflections gave way to action through thematic working groups organized around the central pillars of the gathering.

During the event, several experiences were shared, such as:

• the Secretariat of Environment of Tucumán and community environmental education
• gardens in Colombia and their role in children’s learning about food and the restoration of the social fabric
• stories from the Amazonian Kichwa worldview about the microbial world and natural cycles
• the university garden and the recovery of agrobiodiversity
• and community participation strategies and the understanding of food and health through the Child-to-Child methodology.

These, along with others, provided a significant contribution and strengthened the concepts of Living Earth.

The first thematic pillar shed light on the garden as something more than just a food production space. The shared experiences demonstrated how educational gardens become living laboratories where children and communities learn from experience, strengthening bonds with nature, developing life skills, and understanding – in a practical and playful way – the invisible microbial world and how it interrelates with biodiversity, nutrition, and health.

The dialogues highlighted the potential of gardens to integrate:

• scientific knowledge
• local wisdom
• and participatory methodologies

promoting an education that connects learning with doing, feeling and caring.

The second pillar invited participants to look at the invisible: the microbial life that inhabits soils, water, food, and our own bodies. The reflections helped people understand that human health deeply depends on the health of ecosystems and the biodiversity that sustains the fertility of the land.

The discussions emphasized the need to strengthen more sustainable and healthy agrifood systems that recognize the microbial world sustaining the life cycles of the soil; promote antibiotic-free production practices; and recognize the contribution of ancestral knowledge in caring for the soil and biodiversity.

The first thousand days: Sowing health from the beginning of life

The third pillar delved into the importance of the first thousand days of life – from gestation to two years of age – as a decisive stage for the physical, emotional, and immunological development of children.

The exchanges highlighted the relationship between the microbiome, nutrition, childbirth, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding, as well as the need to guarantee healthy environments for mothers, babies, and families. Reflections also focused on the importance of reclaiming connections with real food, community knowledge, and the territories that produce them.

The third day of the gathering was an experiential event at the Mirador de Jalshi, located in the Nulti parish of the Cuenca canton. There, the ideas shared during the previous days became tangible through community experiences, cultural expressions, games, and gathering spaces centered around food.

One of the most significant moments was the launch of the Recetario Comunitario de Nulti (Nulti Community Cookbook), a collective creation that gathers recipes, stories, memories, and food knowledge from the families of the parish. This cookbook was built through intergenerational dialogue between grandmothers, grandfathers, and the children of the parish, using the Child-to-Child methodology and a community-based food assessment.

The day also featured the participation of local agro-producers and entrepreneurs, who shared and sold agroecological products and foods made in the community, strengthening the bond between food producers and consumers.

Music, dance, and artistic expressions accompanied the gathering, serving as a reminder that food is also a cultural encounter. To close, a community pampamesa (shared ancestral meal) brought everyone together around food prepared with local products, symbolizing the reciprocity, diversity, and collective spirit that spanned the entire event.

The presence of students, teachers, researchers, health professionals, agro-producers, community leaders, children, and older adults demonstrated that challenges related to food, biodiversity, and health require dialogue among multiple voices and forms of knowledge. This was precisely one of the greatest strengths of the gathering: proving that solutions are built when academic knowledge, ancestral wisdom, and territorial experiences meet and dialogue on equal terms.

Educational and community gardens to contain AMR

The reflections shared during the gathering also shed light on the fact that containing antibiotic resistance begins long before illness occurs and medicines are used. A living soil, rich in beneficial bacteria and fungi, promotes diversified production systems that mimic nature’s cycles, enrich biodiversity, reduce dependence on agrochemicals, and eliminate the need to use antibiotics in agro-industrial production. In turn, food grown in these systems provides a greater diversity of nutrients and bioactive compounds that help maintain a balanced human microbiome, strengthening natural immunity and helping to prevent chronic, inflammatory, and infectious diseases.

From this perspective, caring for the health of the soil, plants, animals, and people is all part of the same interconnected web. By strengthening nutrition and natural defense capabilities in both humans and livestock, the need to resort to antibiotics decreases, thereby reducing the pressure that drives the emergence of resistance. This approach, fully aligned with the One Health concept, shows that protecting biodiversity and sustainable agrifood systems not only helps address the climate and ecological crisis, but also constitutes one of the most promising pathways to contain antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and restore the balances that sustain life.