ADAPTATION PROGRAMME LAUNCHES

6 June 2022

On May 30, we launched our Adaptation Programme and first adaptation project in collaboration with Feed The Future, by planting a community garden in Elsies River. We planted spinach, lettuce, and onions with the help of many community members and Feed The Future volunteers.

The Adaptation Programme is our latest programme addition alongside our education, advocacy, action and ambassador programme. While starting small, the programme aims to align with our ethos of spreading awareness, increasing participation and youth engagement, and empowering young people to create their own enabling environment and pathways to the future. We live in a time in which we can’t only be calling for the mitigation of climate and environmental impacts, but in which we must start to learn to adapt by attempting to address socio-environmental concerns from within our communities. Our programme will also aim to partner with other organisations working on various adaptation related activities such as food sovereignty, restoration and urban food gardening with a lens of social inclusion.

With this in mind, we reached out to Feed The Future to collaborate on the beginnings of this programme. Feed The Future was started in 2020 by Geronimo de Klerk when he was 17. It is an organisation that is dedicated to working with youth and community members to create community gardens and plant vegetables in food insecure communities. They believe that everyone should have access to healthy and organic food and be able to sustain themselves.

They also provide valuable education about sustainable food growing. And, the harvested vegetables are donated to feeding schemes and soup kitchens in the area.

Our aim with this collaborative project is to revive and transform the existing Feed The Future community garden, in Elsies River, by turning it into an educational space and beautiful garden to fight the effects of malnutrition and create a safe and productive space for youth to spend time.

Currently there are 30 volunteers involved in the project which include young people, women, and elders.

We look forward to watching the garden flourish and learning from all the volunteers involved, along the way! Watch this space 🌱🥬🧅🥕🫑🍅