GQEBERHA – Learners at Kama Primary School in New Brighton will now benefit from a vegetable and fruit garden was launched on Monday, May 26, as part of Kellogg’s South Africa’s Better Days Gardens programme, an initiative aimed at improving access to food in vulnerable communities across the Eastern Cape.

First launched in Gauteng in 2024, the Better Days Gardens initiative has supported more than 2,400 learners while also promoting nutrition education, agricultural skills development and water-efficient gardening practices.

The Eastern Cape expansion will see the establishment of five new school food gardens, reaching approximately 2,400 learners in identified food-insecure communities.

Speaking to the media, Kellogg’s South Africa General Manager Philip Nieman said the initiative is aimed at creating future leaders in South Africa.

“You cannot do that by having children at school who are not fed.

“You need to be fed, you need to have satiety to be able to concentrate and learn, and that’s what we’re trying to do, create that capacity for our children to become the future leaders in South Africa,” he said.

He explained that Kellogg’s South Africa works closely with the Department of Basic Education to identify schools most in need and ensure that school leadership is invested in the programme to make it sustainable.

“We don’t want to do it for one year and then it falls over,” he added.

Kama Primary School principal Armstrong Mfunda said he was excited about the fruit and vegetable garden.

“I’m speechless simply because the new baby is already walking.

“It took us two months to initiate the programme, and now I want to make sure we sustain it, especially for the community I live in,” he said.

Eastern Cape National School Nutrition Programme Director Pumla Gxuluwe said the department values its partnership with Kellogg’s South Africa, as it assists in addressing food insecurity among learners in the province.

“We are currently feeding almost 1.6 million learners through the National School Nutrition Programme, and it has been a wonderful programme since its inception,” she said.

She noted that the department mainly supports learners from quintile 1 to 3 schools.

“If you look at the criteria for selecting these schools, they are schools where learners come from communities with very high unemployment rates, and it is possible for these learners to go to school on empty stomachs.

“It really touches us because you see that many of them rely on this as their only meal. Some cannot even afford Kellogg’s products at home, so when they receive them at school, it really warms our hearts as the department.

“We really appreciate the partnership with Kellogg’s because they are providing something that some of our learners would otherwise not have access to,” she added.