We just love a good harvest. When our team are on site, we try to harvest a little more than usual as part of the workshop so that we can share the best way to harvest vegetables such as spinach and beetroot. Our team have been running workshops for the Gugulethu community together with the Amasoja Youth initiative which is a youth development program for high school students. Unakho are trained in various topics of sustainable vegetable gardens and the focus of the recent workshops have been on combining the skills of all workshops completed in order for our team to understand if there are any gaps in knowledge areas so that we can prepare educational materials to support learning.
Unakho Children Home Care is a home that cares for 33 orphaned children in the Barcelona area of the Gugulethu Township in Cape Town, South Africa - a historical dumping site where majority of members of the community live in shacks and tiny low income homes without access to water and electricity. The children's home began with 1 little girl who needed a home because her father was abusing her. The Bonani family took the little girl in, and before long was caring for other children whose mother and father had died of HIV/AIDS. Today Unakho cares for 33 children. They house, feed, wash and aim to find a loving family for these children. Although these children have no parents to call their own, Julius and Irene Bonang love these children as their own. Despite the community not having direct access to water on the premises, our team have been leveraging the on site Jojo tank in order to water the vegetables.
The Call 2 Care team met with PPECB implemented the gardens in March 2019 shortly after we shared Unakho's story. Immediately PPECB, sought out to provide a helping hand by sponsoring and sending their staff to get involved to build the water wise vegetable gardens as part of The iGardi Project. Since the build, we have hosted a number of workshops and it's so incredible to see how the community are responding by taking soil home in packets to grow their own plants at home to even looking at creating their own earth worm farms.
The Perishable Products Export Control Board (PPECB) is an independent service provider of quality certification and cold chain management services for producers and exporters of perishable food products. Learn more at www.ppecb.com
CSI and Corporate Volunteering
Call 2 Care is a non-profit organisation that improves lives through educational outreach projects and socially conscious events while offering a sustainable end to end service to corporates, government, and the general public. Learn more about our CSR programs including CSI and Corporate volunteering at www.call2care.org.za
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