While South Africa is considered a food-secure country, rampant inequality makes access to nutritious food difficult for a large part of our population. This is what makes the Motupa circuit school gardening programme so important. The programme supports the installation and growth of food gardens at schools in the Tzaneen district in Limpopo to give learners the nutrition they need.
Ntsako Olaf Ndhimandhi, a coordinator for the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP), says through the programme learners are provided with meals by the department of education. Those meals are then supplemented with produce from the school garden.
“My duty is to make sure that learners are filled with a nutritious meal and encourage the school to have sustainable food productions.”
Ndhimandhi explains that while the gardens are managed by the school principals, the NSNP ensures that teachers have the training they need in order to encourage sustainable living.
“When it comes to training, we only train the educators, not the learners. We don’t have a training programme [for them] but we train educators [because] we believe that educators will pass the training to the learners.”
Benefitting thousands
The Motupa circuit school gardening programme benefits over ten thousand learners of all school levels. Ndhimandhi says learners are provided with a balanced, nutritious meal every day of the week.
“We managed to give learners a balanced meal every day, [from] Monday up until Friday, [with] three types of food groups. We give them starch, protein and vegetables every day, so we’re doing well.”
He says that the vegetable gardens for the Motupa circuit were started five years ago, and that there is usually a good variety of vegetables planted. “We usually plant spinach, beetroots, cabbage and carrots.”
He explains that to keep the gardens running, the schools usually get someone to work in the gardens for them. This, however, proves challenging outside of school hours.
“The challenges we have is that we don’t have enough water, and during school holidays there is no one taking care of the gardens. We don’t have the money to pay a person [to] take care of the food production gardens [during that time.]”
Community support needed
Community involvement is also very low, he says. Upholding the programme is basically the burden of only the schools. “To be honest, when it comes to the participation of parents and the community, we don’t have support. It is only the school that manages their projects. The community is not involved.”
Despite the lack of water, community support and funding, Ndhimandhi says that the programme has a long reach. “I [facilitate] 26 schools – 16 are primary schools and 10 high schools. The number of learners fed on the primary level is 8 627, and on the secondary level is 3 991. That means, in total, we feed 12 618 learners.”
For Ndhimandhi, the ultimate goal is to empower schools and learners within the food system. He says that the key to that empowerment is knowledge.
“What keeps me motivated is that I want to see all learners in Motupa have vegetable gardens at their homes. They must learn how to produce food so that they can manage to feed themselves. I want to see all schools feed themselves with the food they produce by themselves, and sell some of the products to the community.”
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