A Hub of social development in Hoedspruit
The idea of the Hoedspruit Hub is to conduct continuous training for general workers and senior staff alike on local commercial farms in order to help create a career path for them.
The Hoedspruit Hub, based just outside of town on the Bavaria Estate, is a social enterprise that aims to generate income through offering training courses for staff on local commercial farms and in return, invest in social development in impoverished local communities.
Three commercial farm enterprises, the Landman Group, Blydevallei Boerdery, and Bavaria Fruit Estates registered the social development enterprise in December 2016 after seeing the potential of offering continuous training to local farm workers in order to try and fill the education gap.
There are many different companies that offer skills development courses but is often just a case of ‘ticking the box’ – the course is delivered but there is never a follow up.
The idea of the Hoedspruit Hub is to conduct continuous training for general workers and senior staff alike on local commercial farms in order to help create a career path for them.
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Personnel from the Hoedspruit Hub carry out a skills and development audit on commercial farms and then create a plan of action, delivering relevant training course and skills enhancement programs over the course of a year. The Hoedspruit Hub is ISO certified and accredited with AgriSETA.
The income generated from the commercial aspect is then ploughed back into local communities, where the Hoedspruit Hub invests in social development.
The first aspect of social development is the Hub’s bursary program which supports approximately 15 learners at the Lowveld Academy.
Hoedspruit Hub also helps to facilitate internships for those studying agriculture. More than just your average practical destination, the Hoedspruit Hub aims to provide a more holistic approach to the internship – offering skills such as CV writing as well as the practical learning component.
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The third area of social development is imparting knowledge in the field of agroecology to local small-scale farmers. There is a demo garden at the Hub which makes use of low-tech and low-cost techniques where local small-scale farmers can come and learn different principles of organic agriculture such as mulching, spacing, irrigation and inter-cropping.
The Hub also offers market access for the produce that they harvest in order to develop these micro-enterprises. Farmers are encouraged to inter-crop in order to maximise biodiversity and reduce pests.
In the future, the Hoedspruit Hub hopes to introduce sustainable gardening practices into local rural primary schools in order to improve food security. The plan is also to integrate gardening into the school curriculum.
