Children & Priest Launch Initiative To Stave Off Hunger, Grow Vegetable Gardens In El Salvador

"It's an initiative in our El Chaparral community aimed at getting children and young people involved," said Victorina Alvarenga, a mother who joins her nine-year-old daughter Sheyla in the garden. The vegetable patch is partitioned into plots named after the youngster in control. One piece of the nursery is devoted to giving food to the elderly.

A month after planting seeds, the first harvest produced huge radishes that were enthusiastically "ripped up" by the children. Felicia Mijango, in charge of a union of rural communes, says the idea has its roots in the confinement of 10,000 Salvadoran refugees who fled to Ocotepeque in Honduras as civil war raged a decade ago.