FOOD SECURITY
Problem Statement
The depth of poverty in the Eastern Cape is revealed in one of the worst Human Development Indices (0.49) in the country. With food prices massively escalating the rural poor in the province are more vulnerable than ever.
The needs are for adequate knowledge about and real skills relating to nutrition, health, increased food security and conservation by enhancing biodiversity strategies in order for people in these areas to both cope with HIV/AIDS and then move beyond a paradigm of basic survival.
Problem Response
Vegetable and indigenous plant cultivation training at community, school and household level establishes productive gardens that supply food and healing plants. Nutrition and Health training adds both theoretical and practical know-how, while Business and Entrepreneurial Skills can be applied to any surplus generated to bring in cash. Basic health training with an extensive HIV/AIDS information and coping mechanisms component is an important element of all our courses.
Umthathi runs two food gardening and nutritional programmes:
The Community Programme and the School Programme.
Following the strategic planning workshop, the staff and Board have agreed that all work within Umthathi should be structured around consistent focus areas, methods and principles and that horizontal learning through sharing of experiences, knowledge and insights should be encouraged both internally and with groups whom we train.
The effectiveness, relevance and sustainability of our work is very important to Umthathi. An important element of our weekly staff meetings is listening to and reflecting on feedback from schools and communities so that we can adapt to issues that are emerging and incorporate responses to issues in our programmes. One of the key issues we are focusing on developing is whether we are using an assets based approach in enhancing the skills, capacities and resources that already exist in a context rather than being perceived as service providers who do all the work and have all the answers.
Another key component of our current strategy is that we work on “health through cultivation” in a holistic and integrated way: schools, families and communities that grow vegetables and medicinal plants in their gardens develop healthier relationships and conflict handling strategies, the fact that people are outdoors and working in the garden is healthy for their bodies, growing vegetable and medicinal plants organically improves the livelihoods of households through nutrition and income generation, and finally cultivating medicinal plants at our nursery and enabling schools and communities to cultivate them means a healthier environment in which plants are not over-harvested in the wild.
A new strategy we have developed for 2009 is a Memorandum of Understanding – developed in consultation with schools and communities – outlining and formally agreeing to the roles and responsibilities of programme participants, authorities in the school or community and Umthathi. We hope the greater sense of ownership of the gardens by schools and communities will result in greater levels of sustainability.
Our programmes are integrated methodologically in terms of assets based, developmental approaches and work around the following themes:
· Enhancing health
· Organic permaculture cultivation methods
· Nutrition and it’s importance for HIV/AIDS,TB, Obesity and Hypertension sufferers
· Gardening as community development
· Cultivation of an income generator
· Honouring of indigenous knowledge
· Contributing to the conservation by enhancing biodiversity strategies
