Crystal Park NPO fights food insecurity with agripreneurship programme

John F Kennedy’s inaugural address as President of the USA inspired Crystal Park resident Thabang Mathonsi to start his Youth Upliftment Project and Skills Development (YUPS) movement to bring about positive changes in his community.

Kennedy’s now historic words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, challenged Mathonsi to jump into action in his community rather than waiting for the government to help address their grievances.

“This is the statement that started our movement to be positive young people living in challenging times where more than just the government is needed to make a change,” he said.

Thabang started an agripreneurship programme to help fight food insecurity in Crystal Park. The initiative equips community members with subsistence and backyard farming skills and also encourages entrepreneurship among the community’s young people.

“Our goal with the program is for every household to learn basic backyard farming and to be entrepreneurial. The program is aimed at empowering youth-led civil society organizations to be compliant and to be more impactful in their communities.”

Through this initiative, YUPS won first place and was awarded a R10 000 cheque during the four-day National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) National Youth Service (NYS) incubator learning programme. It was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German government at Birchwood Hotel in September and August.

The NPO was one of only five that represented Gauteng at the event and was among 150 organisations from across the country.

“This was an impactful experience for me and it certainly raised the hope of our community,” said Thabang.

Responding to how the NYDA and NYS have helped the NPO since the event, he said, “They have included us in a programme which helped us be more compliant, sponsored us with seedlings for our community food garden and linked us to potential sponsors. They also continue to support us with information and training on how to run our organization more effectively.”

Driven by his motto, each one reaches one teach one, Thabang aims to positively impact his community “one member at a time and replicating this until they achieve their goal of having a sustainable community that is food secure by 2030”.

“To do this successfully, we need support in the form of training inputs such as gardening tools, greenhouses and various other structural support in the form of shipping containers that we can use as learning centres.”
To assist, contact Thabang on 063 896 4739.

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