Special mention: The Alexandra Greening Route

The Alexandra Greening Route is a self-starting community farming and tourism initiative that works deep within communities to effect change. Spearheaded by Paul Maluleke, the route offers workshops and teaching programmes for community gardeners, thereby encouraging self-starting sustainable business practices.

The route teaches and encourages the community to plant their own fruit and vegetables in order to sustain themselves and sell on their produce. Produce from the route’s gardens is planted with best practice methods and is donated on a daily basis to the Alexandra Disability Centre. There is also the intention to create a soup kitchen for school learners that face challenges due to poor nutrition.

In addition to this the project allows tourists the opportunity to see a positive side of Alex. It allows them the opportunity to visit the 20 or so community gardens currently being farmed in the township and to take part in workshops and gardening as well as in city-wide clean-ups.

“Although the Alexandra Greening Route was born just over a year ago, every day the concept is growing, and our network stretching,” says Maluleke. “We are constantly getting requests from different organisation that have similar initiatives but don’t know how to activate within this space.

“What we have learnt is that most of our gardens and gardeners have common challenges and problems; they require government intervention and investments to upgrade the farms to be user-friendly for ecotourism and be accessible [for the] community at large.”

“Through the Alexandra Greening Route we are able to move in common vision,” he adds. “Our beneficiaries understand [more] about farming, about global warming and its impact and about nutrition.”