With tackling food insecurity and sustaining local livelihoods still high on its list of priorities for 2021, HACT’s Home Garden project is proving a big success in helping vulnerable families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing lockdown.
The project, which involves supplying gogo (granny) headed households with vegetable seedlings, compost and gardening tools to start a home vegetable garden, has already benefitted over 240 grannies and their families living in the Valley of 1000 Hills communities of Molweni, KwaNyusuwa and Inchanga.
60 year-old, Bongeni Nzama (pictured above) who lives in KwaNyuswa with her three grandchildren is amongst its latest beneficiaries and says the project is a true Godsend as it’s giving women such as herself the ability to grow their own food and feed their families once again. “Our situation last year was very bad” explains Nzama, “for several weeks, me and the children had nothing to eat but pumpkin from my garden and when that ran out, HACT helped us with food hampers. We would have starved if HACT wasn’t there to help us…”
HACT’s Marketing & Fundraising Manager, Claire Hodgkinson describes the project as a “win-win” as not only is it restoring hope and dignity to local families who are facing crippling food shortages, but it’s providing job security for HACT’s Plant Nursery staff who are responsible for growing and supplying the vegetable seedlings for the project.
“COVID-19 has forced us all to work smarter and that’s exactly what projects like our Home Gardens project are all about. HACT has over 30 years’ experience in responding to global health pandemics and this experience has certainly come to the fore over the past year as our team continues to respond with creativity and resiliency to the problems faced by those living in the community as well as those employed through our various economic empowerment projects here at the Centre”, explains Hodgkinson.
Click here to donate towards HACT’s Home Garden project today.
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