Children as young as four years old will return from their Bermuda Day holiday to find that crops from the garden they have cultivated have been stolen.

A corn maze grown by the children at the Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation was to be sold in order to raise money for an educational programme.

The corn was to be harvested in just a week and would have raised about $800 for the Healthy Harvest Garden Enrichment Programme run by the arts foundation for public schoolchildren across the Island.

However, after the theft, only about $50 worth of corn has been salvaged for the sale.

“It happened some time last week and then over the weekend we realised how much was gone,” KAF director Fiona Rodriguez-Roberts told The Royal Gazette. “These people didn’t take all of that just to feed themselves.

“We have a circular corn maze and they went into the centre and took everything reaching out so it looked like it was totally fine. It was looking amazing — now we pretty much have nothing.

“The children come once a week to learn about gardening; growing from seed, collecting seeds, harvesting food, preparing and cooking it. We link it to their curriculum so it covers nutrition, math, science... right now we have Prospect Primary School and Victor Scott children coming to us and they are with a teacher so they can help tie it in. It is very much an enrichment programme.”

Ms Rodriguez-Roberts said that as a non-profit organisation, KAF strived to be as self-sufficient as possible but would now have to find other means to raise the funds.

“That was money that was going straight back into a programme which is 100 per cent funded for the children. We try, in any way that we can, to bring in money ourselves rather than just having to constantly have the hand out to donors.

“Donors have been phenomenal but, again, we are trying to everything that we can. It was a big chunk for us. It would have taken care of a big portion of our seeds for next year and some equipment.”

KAF has contacted the Police about the incident and are considering how to better secure the garden.

Ms Rodriguez-Roberts added: “The children are going to be back in tomorrow and they are very proud of their accomplishments in the garden. I think they are going to be pretty upset — my child is four years old and she woke up this morning and said ‘it is just wrong mommy, how can people do that?’

“Now we are considering our options and asking, ‘how do we make our crop like a fortress?’”