We have revived a school garden that has been abandoned by community members who were growing vegetables in it. During the covid-19 pandemic we were working with the school to store the food parcels we were distributing in the community and when we noticed that the support was shrinking we decided to look at other ways of helping community members to learn to importance of growing their own food. We encouraged young people and learners to engage in food production so that they become aware of what goes into the food they consume and learn to preserve food or waste less as they are people who don't have access to food. We teach young people about the importance of caring for the environment so that it also looks after you, and that automatically speaks to addressing food insecurity because you will only realize the damage you are causing towards nature once you start growing something. We believe in a diversified vegetable garden with peppers, cabbage, spinach, tomato, pumpkin, sweet potato, spring onion, brinjal, broccoli, chillies and medicinal plants in our 1 ht piece of land. We sell our vegetables to the community with customers being mostly senior citizens and some goes to the school. There is plenty of land that can be utilized for agricultural purposes but the funding to assist in labour is a challenge. It would be great if NPO that are financially challenged could be assisted with labour maybe for 6 so that they can be on their feet to produce at a larger scale a lot can change. In Brown's Farm there are a lot of unemployed young people who have completed Horticulture and Agriculture from tertiary institutions but they refuse to work for nothing in NPOs that are small. As an environmental NPO in marginalised communities we have noted a lot of projects that need to be fixed by community members but with little financial assistance from those who can.
Bongolethu Primary School, Mzazi Road, Browns Farms, Cape Town, South Africa, Western Cape, South Africa 7750