Emafini Primary School started a vegetable garden for the school and community and it earned them a provincial award for their efforts.
Food & Trees for Africa ran a competition inviting schools across South Africa to share their food gardening stories. There was R435 000,00 worth of prizes, resources and funding for the winning schools. 66 provincial finalists took part in the finals this past month.
“School food-gardens offer teachings about our food-system through outdoor education while building food-resilience in under-resourced areas.”
The EduPlant programme has been running for 24 years and proven to be a great success in helping school become self-sustaining and educating school-goers with skills to run their own gardens.
“EduPlant training has encouraged us to extend our garden. Our neighbours have also started a food garden because of what they saw at our school garden.”- Mr. Lehlohonolo Tsolo, community member from Unity Primary School.
This year, one of the schools from the Eastern Cape came out on top. Emafini Primary School now has an award-winning garden. Their Enviro club, involves 5 teacher, 3 parents and 30 students who work in the food garden daily. Their garden produces enough fresh vegetables and herbs to feed around 300 students.
The garden has been running since 2005 and has made a massive impact within the community.
“The garden has a variety ranging from cabbage and spring onions to herbs and other things which we use to supplement the school’s nutrition scheme food to provide a more well-balanced meal for the kids.
“And the leftovers are going to the community,” – Nomini Ncambele, Teacher
It is such good news seeing these kids make a big difference within their communities.
by 