Good nutrition increases ability to learn An almost forgotten community, the community around the Ndumo Reserve in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, was put back on the map as a result of the establishment of an Environmental Education Centre (EEC) by the Tshwane University of Technology’s (TUT) Department of Nature Conservation some 13 years ago. TUT’s Advancement Office played a vital role in securing funding for the project and has been a close partner in the project ever since. In celebrating Mandela Day, Food & Trees for Africa and the Advancement Office partnered in a weeklong project from 9 to 12 July to empower the community to become more self-sustaining. Since good nutrition and education go hand in hand, evaluation and informal consultation and education sessions were conducted with the women in charge of the school food gardens to assist them in increasing food production and provision. According to Danie Ferns, Deputy Director: Individual Giving, Bursary and Scholarships at the Advancement Office, poverty, the lack of proper nutrition and the social impact of HIV/AIDS were identified as huge threats to the academic progress of learners in the community. In collaboration with Cheryl Ogilvie, lecturer in Nature Conservation, and other staff members at the EEC, food gardens were subsequently established at eight schools in the community to ensure that food would be readily available to hungry learners and especially the high number of AIDS orphans attending those schools. “Some schools have up to 80 AIDS orphans who have to take care of themselves and their siblings. We understand that it is impossible to teach hungry children, which is why we established the food gardens. Many children are fed from the produce of these gardens and we realised that even more lives could be touched positively if the yield of these gardens could be increased.” Danie added that the opportunity came when Joanne Carty, Programme Manager at Food & Trees for Africa, accompanied the Advancement Office on a recent visit to Ndumo to assess and evaluate the gardens. As part of the collaboration she volunteered to provide some training to the women in charge of these gardens. In addition, she worked closely with and had extensive discussions with Bongani Mahlangu, a National Diploma student in Crop Science, who is currently doing his work-integrated learning at the EEC to assist with the school food gardens on an ongoing basis. According to Joanne, the most important factors that impact on food production are soil preparation and management, cultivating organic compost, organic pest control, weed control, watering and companion planting. “The idea is to make things easier for gardeners and to motivate them to harvest bigger crops. The sessions focused on various ways of working smarter, not harder, to achieve this goal,” she said. During the visit she also consulted with and provided free advice to a few managers of community food gardens. Those gardens had been initiated by communities to provide food on an ongoing basis.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 14:48:25 +0000
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