ILUD brings together a number of concepts and practices from; Permaculture, Holistic Resource Management, and Participatory techniques so as to develop strong working examples of productive, people-oriented, and ecologically healthy landscapes that strengthen household and communities’ resilience to the environment, food, and income challenges. What is ILUD made up of? ILUD consists of five key steps which are: -Grounding. Reconnecting the school community to nature, culture, and the past’ -Situational analysis. Identifying locally available resources and developing a common understanding of these resources -Visioning. Thinking into the future and developing long-term goals that are shared by the school community -Integral design. Using Permaculture design skills to re-design the whole school land to create a multi-functional landscape that meets the needs of the stakeholders at the school -Implementation and monitoring. Developing work plans for implementing and monitoring their new whole school land design in a genuinely participatory way What are some of the issues that ILUD is responding to? ILUD responds to: -the linear thinking, with a reductionist education system that mostly prepares children for white-collar jobs- yet not there anyway! -the cultural erosion caused by colonialism and globalization- where many school communities are disconnected from their culture, nature, and their own history. -the bare school landscape- where the hungry children are always asked to sweep and maintain ornamental landscapes. -situations where the indigenous communities are labeled primitive, old-fashioned, poor, rural, traditional, uneducated, and unscientific- which increases their pressure to climb the ladder to get certificates, jobs and to join the mass consumption. -schools exist as islands in the community; parents just send their children to school without being involved in what is going on in the school -the problem-oriented development approach which has created poverty of the mind What are the expected outcomes of ILUD? -Increased participation by all school stakeholders with a stronger school community link -Increased biodiversity on school land with a cool micro-environment created. -Improved conservation of soil and water with reduced soil erosion -Increased access to food by the children and teachers -Increased teaching and learning using locally available resources (TALULAR) across the curriculum -adoption of farming methods that help in climate change adaptation and mitigation -adoption of a culture of caring for the environment and for all forms of life. -creation of a carbon sink in the form of an organic food forest What are the key aspects of an ILUD program? -Inclusiveness & Participatory. Involvement of all school stakeholders at all levels -Holistic. Looking at a school as a whole and not in isolation from the community while designing. -Needs driven. The design should meet the needs of the people who use the land -Experiential learning. A hands-on approach that values learning by doing; trying things out and learning from the experiences -Resilience. Designing for ecological sustainability, social just, and economic viability and building community resilience -Uniqueness. There’s no specific design, each school comes up with its own unique design based on the needs. Who is involved? At the school level the learners, teachers, parents, school administration, parents and teachers’ associations (PTA) and school management committees, local community leadership, and representatives from relevant local government structures are involved in the ILUD process. At the national level, the Ministries of Education, Agriculture, Health, and Environment are engaged and sensitized on ILUD. Where and when? Since 2014, AFIRD has used the ILUD approach to support over 70 primary schools to develop strong working examples of productive, people-oriented, and ecologically healthy landscapes in central Uganda. We have spread the ILUD approach through working collaborative work with other development partners i.e., Save the Children, Kampala capital city authority (KCCA), local governments and Schools and Colleges permaculture Uganda.