Etafeni’s Food Gardens programme works with the beneficiaries of our different programmes and their families to help them establish food gardens in their homes and the community. Together with family members, we clear away the rubble, turn the soil, lay down compost, plant seedlings, and erect a fence around the plot to protect the gardens from pests and animals.
Etafeni then equips the beneficiaries and their families on how to maintain the garden, which plants are seasonal, watering as well as making compost and seedlings for their gardens. Etafeni provides shade cloths to the families to erect it over the garden to help prevent rapid water evaporation and protect against birds and a set of gardening tools such as watering cans, spade, fork, and even a wheelbarrow to those that need them.
We believe that these food gardens help improve the nutritional status of the beneficiaries and their families, household food security and also help generate income through the sale of excess vegetables and to help uplift living conditions by turning their run-down environment into flourishing gardens.
These gardens benefit the most vulnerable group in our community, being grandmothers that are carrying for their grandchildren surviving on social grants. We have established 338 food gardens and have managed to provide vegetables to more than 1948 people including 821 children through the 338 food gardens established during 2020 to date.
