Keeping an Eye on Community Development with Tiger Brands

In 2017, Tiger Brands reached out to Food & Trees for Africa. After community development meetings held in March, vegetable gardens and tree planting initiatives were planned for the year ahead. These initiatives are designed to address food security, carbon sequestration and community greening.

Since then, FTFA has assessed 22 of Tiger Brands’ NGO partner organisations across the country.
Our Food Gardens Department then implemented Permaculture Starter Packs (PSP1’s) at 8 selected community food gardens, after which an additional 9 sites were included. These are being implemented this year (2018).

The community centres were shortlisted in 2 phases from May to September last year.
We have planted 1000 out of the 6000 trees pledged. These will be monitored and supported for a year after plantings.
These sites are all situated at feeding schemes and at community centres. They received training and planting materials as well as educational resources and permaculture designs. The intention and outcomes include:

• Addressing and mitigating the harmful effects of climate change
• Providing large-scale fruit tree distributions nationwide
• Growing and maintaining a sustainable food garden
• Kickstarting and supporting existing garden activities
• Learning the basics of how to create a natural garden inclusive of veggies and herbs which would support current feeding scheme needs.

In many cases, the communities in which the centres are located will benefit from a “Gardens for Homes” intervention too – the first stage of which being Trees for Homes. This is already being implemented at St John the Divine in Mohlakeng (GP).

5 additional communities across SA will benefit from this roll in the next 3 months