The City of Cape Town’s Social Development and Early Childhood Development Directorate through its Poverty Alleviation and Reduction Programme has spent about R1,5 million on food gardens, creating opportunities for residents to become self-sustainable.
The project has not only helped to alleviate poverty, but it has provided residents with skills they need to earn a living.
This month, the directorate’s Poverty Alleviation and Reduction Programme shared its first harvest of the Elsies River Green Grow vegetable garden project with the local community. The project which was started in December last year, has employed 66 Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers from the area. The residents were employed to prepare two hectares of public open space by planting a variety of vegetables.
The workers were assigned to work on the site and prepare the soil for the planting of crops and general agricultural work. However, the site could not be seen in isolation from the rest of the area; and therefore the requests for an additional 20 workers were granted to clean and beautify the surrounding area as well.
The accumulated dirt generated by the cleaning up project is hoarded together and an arrangement is in place with Parks to remove mostly garden refuse every second day. The remaining dirt gets moved into a deep pit from which recyclable items like 2 litre plastic bottles are removed to be used as seedling protectors against wind and hard rain.
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Social Development and Early Childhood Development, Councillor Suzette Little, said that unemployment is one of the most critical issues we face as a society today.
‘Currently the directorate supports 90 food gardens across the city. These food gardens were supported with garden tools, protective clothing, seeds/seedlings, compost, food gardening training and governance training. In the new financial year, the directorate will be allocating another R1 million towards these projects,’ said Cllr Little.
The food garden support programme was done on an ad-hoc basis and was formalised in 2011 when the directorate was established. One of the programmes for the directorate is Poverty Alleviation and Reduction Programme which deals with food gardens.
In May last year, the Bloekombos, Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) Poverty Project team for the directorate; secured a space for food garden at the Bloekombos Community Hall, Kraaifontein. The team then started the process of preparing the ground and encouraged a group of 15 elderly ladies to start a food garden.
One year later and the Sokwakhana Food Garden, Bloekombos, Kraaifontein, have managed to supply vegetables to the clinic for the Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/Aids patients.
Not only do they assist these patients the group also sell their fresh produce to the local community to build up capital for the group, with the intention to start another garden.
Supported by the EPWP Poverty team, the group has managed to start their own Non-Profit Organisation (NPO). The organisation meets regularly to discuss ways to make the project more sustainable for the community.
