On Friday morning, 29th July, the learners at the Hillcrest Primary School in Kensington spent the morning working with employees from FirstRand to implement a permaculture food garden. This team of FirstRand volunteers and learners from the school were working under the guidance and expertise of a team from Food & Trees for Africa.
“Teaching people to use resources like water, soil and land sustainably to produce diverse organic vegetables and herbs is vital as poverty and the price of food increase and climate change will make an already serious issue worse,” said permaculturist Daniel Chitungo.
“Over a billion people on the planet already go to bed hungry. We welcome the FirstRand volunteers’ who regularly work with Food & Trees for Africa and are committed to making a difference.” says Jeunesse Park, Founder of Food & Trees for Africa.
Ms Nomsa Mhlongo, project leader at Hillcrest Primary School, says "the food garden will help produce fresh vegetables for the schools feeding scheme. This will add the needed nutrients to the learners diet, and hopefully improve overall health. The learners will learn valuable food growing skills, which will help them to be able to feed themselves. They will see that fresh produce comes from the earth, not from a supermarket shelf. Taking care of the garden will also instill a sense of responsibility in them, and this is a valuable life skill.”
The FirstRand volunteers were looking to support a school during Nelson Mandela month. They also wanted to work with a school where they could assist with the implementation of a more active environmental awareness campaign for the learners. The team chose to support the Hillcrest Primary School because the school had already taken the initiative to start a food garden to help supplement their feeding scheme. The school has been able to help learners from areas such as Soweto, Naledi, Zola and Diepkloof.
The learners are encouraged to participate in many other greening initiatives such as recycling and cleaning the streets. These environmental awareness projects are motivated through the school’s Leadership Programme, the Soul Buddyz. These identified leaders encourage and motivate the younger learners about the importance of caring for our world.
“This is our contribution to the legacy of Madiba – to make the world a better place,” said Gilbert Swats, the FirstRand Head of Regulatory Risk Management.
This volunteer initiative forms part of the FirstRand Volunteers Programme, launched in December 2003 to support and encourage FirstRand employees to participate in community initiatives. Where employees give of their time or money, the FirstRand Matched Funding Programme matches them R1 for R1. Since the programme was launched, employees have donated R15,3 million to charity organisations and FirstRand have matched this with a further R15,3 million.
