‘These kids – we cannot build the future for them, no matter how much we love them – but we can build the youth for the future,’ Ma Joye tells Daily Maverick. In the second week of December, primary and high schools closed for the year. So what happens to school gardens when they close over the festive period until January?
Umgibe Farming Organics and Training Institutefounder Nonhlanhla Joye, known as Ma Joye, has had an impact on more than 500 school gardens in KwaZulu-Natal under the Ithuba Seedpreneurs School Garden initiative, which began in 2018. Seedpreneurs has a system of ambassadors and champions who are responsible for the gardens, Joye explained to Daily Maverick. Thabane Ngubani, the founder of Ithuba Agribusiness, was the first Seedpreneur, and ambassador, and helped to train the schools and pupils.
The Seedpreneurs train the younger children, “passing the baton” and coordinating who will be in charge the following year, once older children have graduated. “We plan everything from January to the end of October and then November. December there is nothing growing, so there’s no need for anyone to go to school.
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Then in January we start again,” she said. At the schools, they have market days selling produce; huge cabbages and great bunches of spinach are plucked and washed and sold at the stalls. The produce often gets sold back to the schools for nutritious meals.
Between the last week of September and October they have the school garden competition, the “Ithuba Awards”, which recognises the school gardens with the most sales, and how many people the gardens managed to feed in the areas. “We start from kindergarten. They’ve got their own category from three years. Because what we are trying to do is to have a generation of Seedpreneurs that are groomed at an early age to understand accountability and responsibility,” Ma Joye said.
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