Local school wins national food gardening competition

BUSHBUCKRIDGE – A team of three learners and an educator from 66 schools attended the action-packed four-day finals event where over R400 000 worth of prizes were distributed, so no one left empty handed.

Initiated and co-ordinated by Food & Trees for Africa (FTFA), the EduPlant programme has been running for more than twenty years and has reached many thousands of schools across South Africa.

Every year the programme offers free permaculture workshops to educators teaching them how to design, implement and nurture environmentally-friendly food gardens at their schools. In line with its encouragement of sustainable food production and long-standing support of uplifting education in the country, the Woolworths Trust has been the major funding partner of the EduPlant programme over the past thirteen years.

In 2016, the EduPlant Finals event took place in the week before the celebration of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s World Food Day on the 16th of October, which has as its theme, “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too”.

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This served to highlight that the 66 finalist schools that won the exciting trip to Gauteng to attend the event have made substantial achievements and represent thousands of other resilient, productive and sustainable school food gardens which are enhancing food security in their communities.

In the face of severe drought, we were very pleased to receive almost 400 entries into this year’s EduPlant competition,” said Zinzi Mgolodela, Head of Transformation at Woolworths.

“This highlights the potential of an environmentally-sensitive food growing system such as permaculture to help vulnerable communities mitigate the impacts of climate change. In essence, the schools that participate in the EduPlant programme are gaining vital life skills and making important strides when it comes to preparing communities for the challenges of climate change.”

In the interests of entrenching skills deeply, the EduPlant programme goes beyond the educator workshops held at the beginning of each year to also involve participating schools in the Cluster Workshop programme that provides on-going learning through an additional series of permaculture workshops. This helps to nurture schools that are new to the programme and extends the quality and reach of EduPlant.

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The competition component of the programme is tailored to foster development over time with categories for emerging, intermediate, advanced and mentoring schools.

“This year, 50% of the finalists school had entered the EduPlant competition for the first time,” comments Robyn Hills, FTFA Programme Manager, “In the context of climate change, it was fantastic to see so many new schools coming on board and starting permaculture food gardens at their schools.”

The judges also noted that they saw an increased use of compost this year. Compost plays a major role in retaining water in the soil, and it is possible that this helped many schools to maintain their gardens in good condition during the worst drought that South Africa has experienced for over twenty years.

The EduPlant Finals event is a permaculture celebration held at Bosco Youth Centre in Walkerville, Gauteng that rewards and recognises the finalist schools for their food-growing efforts. Over the four days, each school team got the opportunity to present their food garden project to a panel of judges.

There was a festive air as learners and educators enjoyed drumming, beading, music instrument-making, dance choreography and t-shirt art workshops. Permaculture practicals were held while, Love Life offered self-esteem counseling and schools took part in recycling fun.

The next EduPlant educator workshops will be held in all nine provinces starting in February 2017. See the website for more details and video.