FFTC Agricultural Policy Platform (FFTC-AP)

In the Philippines’ southern island of Mindanao, 12-year-old Raaina Hinay teaches people how to farm.

Hinay is a co-founder of Kids Who Farm, an NGO based in the city of Zamboanga that teaches communities and schools how to start their own micro farms. Hinay started Kids Who Farm in 2019, when she was only 9 years old, inspired by her desire to save her school’s unmaintained fruit garden.

Since then, Hinay and her father have been leading workshops on the basics of sustainable farming for kids as young as herself and even adults, to assist them in setting up their own businesses. Hinay’s first workshop, at the age of 9, was with a class of university students more than twice her age.

Over the past three years, Kids Who Farm has established 38 community food gardens and school micro farms in 25 barangays, or wards, throughout Zamboanga City, and in two barangays in the northern Mindanao city of Cagayan de Oro, with 180 youth volunteers participating. The NGO has trained up to 3,000 young people on sustainable farming.

Hinay says she hopes to help tackle the Philippines’ twin challenges of aging farmers and the need to have a more sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture.

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