SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

RENSHIA MANUEL GROWBOX growbox.strikingly.com

‘Iwas a school librarian for six years but then

I was told that the school couldn’t afford my services any longer,’ says Renshia Manuel. ‘I was desperate to find employment to feed my four children.’ Literally to put food on the table, Renshia began planting vegetables in her backyard. She remained unemployed for two years – until 2016, when she came across an initiative by the City of Cape Town, #YouthStartCT, that was on the lookout for sustainable business ideas and aimed at empowering underprivileged communities.

That’s when Renshia developed the idea for GrowBox: ‘making urban agriculture available to all, right on their doorsteps’.

‘I wanted to help other families to start gardening for the table and help my community of Hanover Park in that way,’ she says. But she had to consider that many of her neighbours didn’t have enough land space and also faced challenges such as vandalism and theft.

Renshia won third place in the 2016 #YouthStartCT, and used the prize money to register GrowBox as a business and acquire the tools

and skills to further develop the company. She’s been acknowledged elsewhere too: in 2017 Renshia was a finalist in the Pitch & Accelerate competition hosted by the Africa Women Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum and came third at the 2018 Samsung Global Start-up Acceleration Awards.

GrowBox operates as a wholesale nursery that grows vegetables and herb seedlings to supply farms and retail nurseries. They also encourage community members to grow their own food, making it easy and accessible by manufacturing and selling wooden veggie boxes, and running food gardening workshops.

The company has also facilitated programmes at early childhood development centres and community support initiatives, reaching more than 400 kids and 200 beneficiaries. ‘We teach people the basics, from making fertiliser to growing food from food waste and sustainable food gardening methodology,’ Renshia says.

She plans to use the Social Entrepreneur prize money to take GrowBox’s flat-pack product range to market, and to increase production at the nursery in order to impact more households.

❛I wanted to help other families to start gardening for the table.❜