New skills for parents
Kwankqubela, in partnership with the department of education Chris Hani West district, awarded 15 small-scale farmers who graduated from an agro ecology six-month learning programme in Whittlesea recently.
All the recipients were parents of children from Ntabelanga Higher Primary School.
Nangamso Ka NomaHlubi- Koza of Kwankqubela said the programme was funded by Tekano, which is one of the sister programmes of the Atlantic Institute.
“It’s one of seven global programmes that advocate and advance variety of equities so you’ve got Tekano on health equity, Columbia University in New York with the Nelson Mandela Foundation on racial equity and the London School of Economics on social and economic equity,” she said.
She added that Whittlesea is now counted among the communities that are part of Tekano, which strive to improve health status across all populations in SA.
“The school has a history of addressing the food insecurity challenges.
“Those who know the school will remember the late Mrs Gugushe, who used to do gardening and currently we know that the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) recently released a report that said there’s dire malnutrition in the Eastern Cape,” she said.
She said the farmers’ training was inclusive of a clear understanding of working the land, understanding the seed economy, political economy and mostly how they can setup a well-oiled community-driven food production system.
“There are six big gardens inside the school, where we trained the farmers and they went back and did the same thing back home, where they also adopted other families to do their gardens.
“The whole point for us was to address food insecurity but most importantly promote food sovereignty,” she said.
Through the programme, she said, farmers have also managed to produce their GMO-free production of seedlings to help the community as well.
“The programme also ensured that their homes were also fenced.
“The farmers are between the ages of 30 and 50.
“We’ve created more than
60 earning opportunities throughout the course of the project in various ways such as people who were building stands for the tanks and fencing to name a few,” NomaHlubiKoza said.
NomaHlubi-Koza said the programme was a success through the support that was shown by education department circuit manager Thanduxolo Fatyela.
Fatyela said: “We really appreciate what Kwankqubela did at the school. We also appreciate the effort made by the farmers to encourage others to get to farming. The product that they are getting from the school helps with school nutrition because they are using their own vegetables.”
He also said that the school had also immensely benefited from the programme because they have to sustain the school and they have the know-how that was planted through the skills shared by programme.