Food Gardens Project
Food Garden project participants from Spitzkop who received certificates for their bountiful produce. President Keith and visiting DG Riana Pretorius handed out the Certificates to the happy recipients.
The progress made by the participants under the mentorship and guidance of the ChoiCe organisation. Just amazing results! One of the Global Grant funders visiting from America to see the wonderful progress.
Food Gardens Project launched in August 2022
A Global Grant was recently secured and Rotary Haenertsburg, in association with ChoiCe (an NGO in Tzaneen) have launched a two year Food Garden project. Families in three local community areas - Segwashe, Makgeng and Spitskop are receiving training, equipment and on-going mentoring in order to grow their own produce.
The RC Haenertsburg food garden project has its roots in the offer of seeds during the first COVID lockdown. It was soon realised that providing seeds to any community where a) water is extremely scarce and b) hardly any food crops are grown was impractical. The daughter of one of our members, Peter Stuart-Thompson, is the director of CHoiCe, a local NGO which has extensive experience in creating food gardens in impoverished rural areas. The decision to partner with them was taken and the process of raising funds and fixing international partners began. Almost two and a half years later the project got off the ground.
The families selected to participate in the project are selected by their communities. Thereafter, training in permaculture, water harvesting and soil preparation is done. Once suitable growing areas have been prepared, participants are provided with a selection of seedlings. Monitoring continues for the duration of the programme. Only seedlings grown from organic, non-GMO seeds are used, to ensure that crops will yield viable seeds for future planting.
Recent publicity article in the November 2022 Rotary Africa Magazine :
