POD lento – a term from the word for a clutch of snails, but literally meaning ’seed of beans’, plus the Italian musical word for ’slowly’ – is the offspring of Slow Food Australia’s Dirty hands project that will enable kids to create their own website for school and community gardens throughout Australia. Children in schools with kitchen gardens – and those growing food in community gardens – will be able to share gardening stories and images on the web through the Slow Food Australia-sponsored website podlento.org
Taking a small snail as its symbol, Pod lento aims to add to kids’ understanding of food and soil ecology, the cycle of life, garden friends and pests, and the almost instantaneous gratification delivered by radish seeds: green leaves after just a week in the ground!
Pod lento will help to build a growing food network by encouraging the writing and photography skills of web-savvy kids in an information age. Slow Food Australia wants to secure the support of school communities to extend Pod lento into classrooms as part of the curriculum so that kids can acquire creative, web design and writing skills while learning about food. Pod lento will be on-line soon.
Related projects and programmes