Thatu is working with SEED, an NGO that specialises in establishing gardens with teachers and pupils as practical training resources for both curriculum delivery and school feeding. They help to create living classrooms that also, literally, deliver fruit – or vegetables! The significant levels of hardship experienced among families on the Cape Flats mean that many do not get enough food to enable pupils to benefit from the education they value so highly. When this is coupled with high levels of HIV infection, nutrition becomes even more of a priority.

The Cape Flats is an inhospitable landscape – overcrowded, barren and infertile dunes, SEED has already successfully introduced garden programmes in schools in this area, teaching permaculture methods that maximise the use of all the available natural resources and recycling almost everything, including plastic carrier bags and water!

Beyond this first year, the school gardens can benefit from more intensive training and practical help, culminating in entrepreneurial workshops developed to ensure that the gardens can be sustained over time by selling surpluses and extending their range.

Thatu hopes to raise enough funds to be able to be part of this growth.

An exciting new proposal is currently taking shape in the form of a school in Pretoria that was introduced to us by its ‘twinned' school here in the UK. The ambitious and able head of the school wants to develop not only a food garden for his pupils, but to make food use of school land to offer gardening plots for up to 60 of the poorest parents and other members of the community. As the school also operates as a ‘hub’ for a number of other local schools there is plenty of room for wider expansion into the community!

Thatu’s progress would not have been possible without the support of WIBF and those who attended the Annual Award for Achievement event and we would like to offer our thanks once again. We are committed to keeping you in touch to show you through words and pictures how that money is yielding a harvest in the gardens – so look out for more articles!

If anyone is interested in making a donation or helping in any way, please visit our website at www.thatu.org for a donation form or contact us at info@thatu,.org

HELP!

Thatu is in need of an energetic and committed person to join our volunteer team as Treasurer. The task is not onerous – a few hours a week – and you will be invited to participate to the full in how Thatu develops. Contact Margery Povall at info@Thatu.org for more information.

Reproduced with kind permission of WIBF www.wibf.org.uk