Eco-Community Award Zolani Mahola: Words of encouragement

th e Eco-Community Award

ABALIMI BEZEKHAYA

Abalimi Bezekhaya (farmers of the home in isiXhosa), established 1982, is a non-profit micro-farming organisation that aims to provide basic human necessities for indigent persons, by assisting impoverished communities within the Cape Flats to establish and maintain their own vegetable gardens, so as to enable them to supplement their existing, inadequate supply of food and create livelihoods. Abalimi Bezekhaya promotes small scale urban farming through providing training, resources (seeds, seedlings and manure), infrastructure support and market access. Our aim is to support and enable the urban poor to become self-employed as gardeners and urban micro-farmers. We furthermore engage in the conservation, rehabilitation and protection of the natural environment within the Cape Flats by planting windbreaks, trees and by landscaping areas used by community gardeners. Our garden centers are based in local communities while Harvest of Hope (a business unit to sell surplus veggies) helped to establish market access. It did this in order to create and maintain stable income security for urban farmers with surplus to sell. These farmers are now taking the next step towards independence by directly interacting with their clients.

CTEET: SUSTAINABLE SCHOOLS

CTEET has been working on the sustainable schools programme since 2013 and the main objective of the programme is to focus on a sustainability ethos within schools, through multi-levelled engagements such as environmental lessons, establishment of environmental projects, learner engagement, teacher development and community action days. All too often organisations expose children to once-off environmental messaging with no continuity which has limited impact. CTEET’s approach is to have multiple and varied programmes with the schools to ensure a greater impact and increased pro-environmental behaviours. By building a community of schools (i.e. a community of practice), learners and teachers are capacitated to improve the quality of the school environment. Within this community of practices, learners and teachers have a greater sense of confidence and develop a greater sense of care towards each other, the natural environment and the wider community. The sustainable schools programmes have engaged with over 50 schools since 2013 with 35 schools remaining on the programme for three or more years consecutively. During this time a number of schools have implemented indigenous gardens, food gardens, recycling programmes, water harvesting systems and more recently have taken on the challenge of becoming “Zero Waste to Landfill” schools.

SCARBOROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP

Scarborough The Scarborough Environmental Group started, in 2019, by long-time local Kelson Da Cruz, is a multi-faceted, Environmental Group collaborative effort involving any and all keen participants from the village. It is a non-profit collective which is aimed at looking after our planet, by involving the community in many different, simple ways. The projects range from dog poop composting, communal kitchen waste composting, eco brick stations, adopt-a-tree with rain water and compost supplied at the environmental centre, owl houses, bat houses, indigenous seedling and spekboom propagation, traffic awareness, a lift share scheme, and a “share the shores” initiative which protects vulnerable nesting shore birds.

The efforts of this collective have made a noticeable difference to the village – bringing the community together for a common cause but also achieving a visible reduction of beach plastic waste, a noticeable reduction in dog waste, a successful communal compost production, more conscious drivers, the successful raising of 4 Oyster Catcher and 4 White Fronted Plover chicks, and a newly implemented “Lift Share” initiative which offers a safer solution to local transport challenges. This single project, with it’s multiple efforts and friendly, inclusive approaches, has truly brought Scarborough closer to being a Conservation Village.

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