Our Garden, a community food garden tended to by homeless people at Brackenfell train station, is plucking the fruits of their hard work as they become part of the Shoprite Group’s Market Day initiative.
After applying and qualifying the garden will sell its organically grown vegetables directly to the public at the Checkers Protea Heights Market Day in Protea Heights on Wednesday 7 June – one of only three in the Western Cape.
Started by Brackenfell non-profit company Jesus in Action (JiA) during the pandemic, Our Garden was aimed at food security and job creation for the homeless living near the station.
“As a community we took responsibility together to convert the train station into a beacon of light. We have come to realize that doing something positive like tilling the soil and planting is a strong counter to the ‘broken window’ syndrome. People are less likely to scatter papers where there are organic vegetables or a beautiful flower growing,” says Ettiene Pio from JiA about the motivation behind the project.
Pio says the garden has thus far not been able to produce continuously due to challenges with water and irrigation, shortage of seedlings and funding. But in partnership and with the help of Shoprite and advice from Food & Trees for Africa, they dream of being able to be in continuous production from 1 September.
“We started with one bed and aim to have three blocks of 30 beds each, totalling 90 beds in a planting cycle,” he told TygerBurger last week.
More opportunities
The team at Our Garden consists of volunteer gardeners from the community and about 10 homeless people.
“We want to offer more opportunities as Our Garden expands and grows. Work in Our Garden and around the Lazarus Food Store is rewarded with a JiA Box as part of our ‘Earn-Your-Keep’ project. A few hours of work in the garden is not only good exercise, but also good for you to forget about your problems for a little while and stand back to look at your handiwork. Our Garden also helps us to live closer to our Creator. We can plant, but He is the one who makes it grow.”
On Sunday afternoons, lunches are prepared using produce from the garden and served to the homeless after a church service.
“We have also been able to distribute the crops several times to our 40 beneficiary organisations, churches, communities and families.”
Support
With the Shoprite head office in Brackenfell, Pio says it made sense to approach the group to work along in a project that benefits the community.
“Most residents support Shoprite and many are also already involved within the JiA network. The more businesses, churches, organisations and residents can join hands, the more beautiful the testimony of what a community can achieve that works together for a better life.”
He adds that the success of the garden thus far is inspiring.
“I think we only see a small piece of the potential that Our Garden holds. It gives me hope that a piece of barren land can be transformed in this way.”
Sanjeev Raghubir, sustainability manager at the group, expressed his excitement in a statement to the media this week. “We’re very excited that Market Day, since its inception in 2017, keeps expanding and that we continue to support community food gardens to create sustainable livelihood opportunities in more ways,” says Raghubir.
