Hout Bay school project flourishes
THRIVE, an NGO working in Hout Bay, hopes to sustain the area’s well-being by nurturing nature’s diversity.
Thrive is working through school awareness projects and events, as well as the facilitation and formation of local enterprises that will ultimately benefit the community.
With its mentors, and in partnership with experts at local schools and community initiatives, Thrive aims to educate and mobilise about 4 000 learners, 130 educators and more than 30 000 family members and friends living in Hout Bay through five pillars of sustainability, namely “Zero Waste, Local Food, Water-wise, Energy Efficiency and Biodiversity”.
Thrive assists eight Hout Bay schools to manage their waste effectively by starting and maintaining vegetable gardens, fruit and nut orchards, introducing water, energy-saving practices and planting indigenous plants which encourage local species of birds and insects.
Thrive co-founder Bronwen Lankers-Byrne says: “Various flourishing gardens have delivered one success after the other and will provide Hout Bay residents with the freshest vegetables in the bay on market day.”
She said they normally plant seeds like beet, lettuce, rocket, tomato, beans, celery and basil on seed trays inside the seedlings tunnel at the Valley Nursery in Hout Bay.
The seedlings are then taken by the schools who grow the seedlings at the schools; during the harvest time, they bring the harvest to the Valley Nursery where they were first planted and put on sale.
Lankers-Byrne said that through this exercise they are equipping the children for the future.
Last week, urban farmers gathered at Valley Nursery for an orientation session which would assist them to establish their own farming ventures in a space offered by the Domestic Animal Rescue Group.
The first session taught the prospective farmers about soil preparation, sowing seeds and how to sow seeds which would be housed in the growing tunnel at the Valley Nursery.
Lankers-Byrne said she was happy with how the idea of Thrive had unfolded since it was started in 2011.
“We’ve got a model that can be replicated in other areas. We’re currently working on a big project to pilot different ways of managing waste in Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg,” said Lankers-Byrne.
Thrive had recently received funding from the City of Cape Town to set up a pilot project in Hangberg which would separate waste at source level, creating a system collecting three types of waste with studies showing that 80 percent of waste can be re-used in some form or the other.
“It’s a no-brainer and requires a big change in attitude from the City of Cape Town. We want to grow food in whichever spaces we can and throw nothing away,” said Lankers-Byrne.
On Saturday, the NGO will launch its organic market at Valley Nursery at 10am.
Lankers-Byrne said the market is the result of the hard work of the Thrive team, eco schools and community gardens in Hout Bay and Llandudno.
Community benefits from learning to live in sustainable ways