Jeremy Loops launched The Big Food Drive in 2020, and it provided over 100,000 meals; to make the initiative sustainable, they now install food gardens too.
Cape Town, South Africa (22 July 2021) – In 2020, Greenpop Co-Founder Jeremy Loops rallied the support of his fans to raise over R700,000 to provide meals to communities who need it most. They called the initiative, The Big Food Drive (TBFD).
TBFD provided over 94 organisations with fresh produce over a 6-month period. In total, they provided over 100,000 meals to those in need. This included soup kitchens and community-led kitchens.
The TBFD team wanted to turn the initiative into a sustainable one, so they brainstormed ways to do that. When food is involved, the sustainable option is to turn to growing or raising it yourself. This way, the option of food is always there. The team loved the idea of community food gardens and worked to implement that. They focused on gardens that would be filled with fruit and vegetables.
The idea; install the gardens, share the knowledge and have the communities tend and maintain the projects.
“First they partnered with Urban Harvest, who have designed, installed and managed over 400 beautiful and productive food gardens since 2006. Greenpop has also come on board to support with the educational elements of the garden as well as the planting of indigenous vegetation.
And then, to prove that the vision was possible and scalable, they went ahead and built a garden and tended it all the way to its first harvest!”
The first community garden installed was at the Bhongolethu Primary School in Capri, Western Cape, South Africa. You can watch the video of the amazing garden here.
The project has been a success; they went from breaking ground last year to the first harvest this year. Now the garden can grow on that success year-on-year, all the while teaching the pupils at the school. Take a look at the stunning garden below.
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