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Food Garden Project in Blikkiesdorp and Lavender Hill

Food Garden to battle poverty, malnutrition, and providing opportunities participating in the community

28.05.2013 |WECF

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(c) Urban Harvest

As part of the EWA Project, community food gardens have been set up in Blikkiesdorp and Lavender Hill, South Africa. The food gardens will give a chance to empower women by providing more nutrition for themselves and their families and give the opportunity to gain income from selling surplus food.

The peri-urban areas of Blikkiesdorp and Lavender ill have one of the highest poverty and malnutrition rates in South Africa. Therefore, WECF has taken it on to break the vicious circle of malnutrition, hunger and poverty. Together with the local partners Urban Harvest, Soil for Life, and Decentralised Environemntal Solutions, Food Garden have been created.

The food garden in Blikkiesdorp is located centrally, just next to a communal Multi Purpose Centre. This ensures that many people will be passing by automatically, experiencing the change of atmosphere a patch of green can make. The food grown in the garden will be used directly for a street pop-up restaurant or will be sold wholesale to various food vendors on site and simplify trading. Circumventing complicated bureaucratic structures and costly intermediary vendors, profit margins will be high for the people selling the food produce.


(c) Urban Harvest


The Food Garden planned to being set up in Lavender Hill will serve as a multi-purpose facility, giving resources for a sustainable, healthy life to an underserved community. The garden will develop into a supply centre, advice hub and training centre along-side with a sports arena, to form a site for cultural and economic engagement of the community. 

With already trained home-gardeners by Soil for Life, the food garden will serve as a central point of contact for further gardens built by the trainees. The garden project will create several jobs, such as compost makers, food garden managers and trainers for home gardening. It will empower people not only economically by enabling them to gain income, but also politically by allowing them to participate in the shaping of their community.

You can watch a video clip about the trained home-gardeners by Soil for Life here:





The garden projects economically and politically empower people and especially women who, in South Africa, traditionally have to deal with house-hold tasks such as preparing food. The gardens increase their economic independence and participation, providing resources to assure basic sustainable livelihood conditions. The food gardens will grow food, grow resources, grow gardeners and grow food sellers. WECF and its local partners are growing people with the ELA project and the community gardens in South Africa.

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