by interns Sasha Hippard and Alaena Robbins
Artworks for Youth, a volunteer driven not-for-profit based out of New York City, provides year-long after school art instruction to under-served students across South Africa. Last year, they became interested in starting school gardens due to a necessity they saw when the school district could no longer feed a meal to the children during the day. Instead of just continuing to provide meals to the students, Artworks for Youth approached Slow Food NYC’s chapter leader Sandra McLean to take on a garden project at one of the South African schools. Sandra’s mission was to travel to Joe Slovo primary school, located in the Joe Slovo township, and help develop a school “feeding garden” that would serve both educational as well as practical purposes. With the help of $800 from fundraising and anonymous matching donor, Sandra was able to get to South Africa and collect the supplies needed to get the project started.
What would the garden grow? The two cooks at the school said the most useful crops would be ones that can be “put into soup,” and Joe Slovo students narrowed that down to root vegetables like turnips, carrots, and potatoes as well as other delicious veggies and fruits such as swiss chard, green beans, and tomatoes. Aside from the obvious benefit of producing more food for students who may not have access to enough meals on a daily basis, Sandra says the school garden also provides the children with a wider range of food allowing for a more diverse and interesting diet.
Over a period of 2 weeks the Joe Slovo students and Sandra worked together to build twelve 5’x5’ beds which were filled with locally bought seeds or partially mature greens. Buying locally was just one of several efforts to ensure that the garden could be easily sustained by the community season after season, and that the seed money stayed in the community as much as possible. Each bed will be maintained by two students throughout the year and a teacher, Mrs. Sevuseni, is now the garden’s manager for the long term.
Despite some fears that a lack of economic resources may be a struggle in maintaining the garden, particularly for the first few seasons, Sandra told us that year after year it will become cheaper to maintain and much more self-sustaining. According to Sandra, the spirit and energy to perpetuate the garden are definitely abundant. Additionally, she hopes that the community’s strong bonds will allow for the passing along of both new and age-old farming knowledge to the next generation.
The Joe Slovo elementary school garden is proof that even communities faced with extreme political, social, and economic challenges can work together and achieve profound change, small steps at a time.
Sandra and Slow Food NYC struck out alone but now there’s more help for chapters interested in working with an African community to start a garden. At the 2010 Terra Madre Conference, Slow Food International launched an exciting program called A Thousand Gardens in Africa. The main goal of the ambitious project is to facilitate collaborative efforts that will create food gardens in every Terra Madre community across the continent of Africa.
Each garden requires $1300 to get up and running. Click here to make a donation.
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