Help us to Grow the Green Army

Two-thirds (69%) of households in the Cape Flats were living below the food poverty index prior to the disastrous economic consequences of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the vulnerabilities of our food systems and served as a rehearsal for the impending climate crises. It has presented us with a unique opportunity to foster local production for local consumption, with shorter value chains and greater diversity and resilience. This shift liberates us from the destructive industrial feeding system, empowering communities to take control of their own destinies.

We take pride in the leadership shown by SEED Alumni, who have spearheaded efforts to enhance community food resilience by establishing food gardens during the Covid-19 lockdowns and addressing the escalating hunger in their surroundings.

However, we have yet to establish a program that supports our Alumni in ensuring the long-term sustainability of these food gardens.

Presently, our Alumni offer Organic Gardening workshops to individuals interested in cultivating local food production within the Cape Flats. Additionally, we provide Resilience Design workshops, enabling participants to apply the Permaculture design process to their community gardens. We offer ongoing support and resources to assist them in their endeavors.

The interdependence of our food systems and petrol prices has become exceedingly evident. Localizing our food systems emerges as the only viable solution to ensure that we can adequately feed our people.

The Seeding Futuresprogram operates at two levels; We focus on building resilience and green economy skills in individuals and we work systemically through mapping and stimulating the local green economy with the aim to understanding the career pathways for our Alumni.

The last month of our program includes a Job Placement with a local green enterprise, these placements are brokered with a skills and aptitude fit and participants apply for Job Placement and gain confidence in the job application process.

The Job Placements are mutually beneficial, students get hands of experience of working in a enterprise and our green economy partners benefit from capacitated human capital and the opportunity to trial interns before employment.

The program stimulates the local green economy with 16 000 hours per year and has an employment rate of 60%. We have also incubated 30 Alumni enterprises this year.

We are now going to boost our Alumni into the job market and green economy where the multiplier impacts will take hold.

Look out for news about our plans for 2023 intake.

Links:

• SEED Homepage

With your kind support we are growing the Cape Flats Green Army strong.

So far this year, we have graduated 79 unemployed youth from the Seeding Futures bootcamp and have also been focussing on an Alumn Ignite that has achieved the following over 2021:

• Incubated 30 youth-led enterprises
• Graduated 45 Alumni facilitators and supported them to teach 49 workshops reaching another 10 600 individuals.
• Graduated 78 community gardeners through a four-day workshop that aims to grow sustainabilty in community gardens through capacity building and resource support.

We are feeling strong as we now begin to feel the incredible ripple of our Alumni.

Thank you for your belief in this work. Over the next three years we are planning to grow our Alumni even stronger and are also looking at how we transfer our Seeding Futures training to another 10 organisations that will take our impact to a national level.

Viva the Green Army and the huge potential it has as we look at a Just Transition and the stimulation of local green economies.

Your support has made this all possible.

With gratitude.

Links:

• How Seeding Futures transforms lives of individuals.
• The plans for Seeding Futures for the next three years.

We are so grateful for your support over one of the craziest years we have ever navigated. Your generosity and belief in our work kept our wheels turning and able to adapt and keep growing the green army.

We now head into the final year of Phase II of Seeding Futures Resilience Training. The plan for Phase II is to graduate 100 youth per year for three years – with thorough Monitoring &. Evaluation (M&E) to catch the points of magic and poise the training for greater impact.

Covid-19 and the devastating socio-economic effects of lockdown has been a real-life. Resilience test for our Alumni – and the M&E shows that despite the crises, graduates reported a greatly improved ability to manage stresses and shocks and to reframe problems as challenges.

Personal Resilience
What stands our significantly is the inner  transformation of graduates – who leave the program with higher levels of hope and agency through: greater self-knowledge,  being connected to a bigger vision and being able to take care of their own resilience needs.

The internal change in graduates results in the following external outcomes:

Economic Resilience
64% find work (36% able to continue working through lockdown)
16 new enterprises created (9 closed over lockdown)
48% set up of multiple income streams (gig economy)
77% feel fat better equipped to handle the crises

Household Resilience
89% practice long term food resilience systems
63% implement resilience systems in own homes (food, water, energy, medicine)
78% implement resilience systems in other homes (average 4 homes) 

So the work you have supported is showing great promise.

We invite you to join us for 2021 – an exciting year where we get to see the longer term impacts of the training and position it for greater reach.

Your support has been very appreciated.

Leigh and the SEED team

Links:

• Seed Resilience Training

• Join us for 2021 (PDF)
  

We thank you for your support of this important work – which is now starting to be valued more by government departments and the general public. We have been working at designing and resilience training for 20 years and we are now incredibly well positioned strategically to begin to take a leading role in the transition of our cities and settlements towards more self-sufficient, socially just and cohesive neighborhoods.

THE YEAR THAT WAS
What a crazy year it has been – one we could never have anticipated. Permaculture teaches us to frame problems as opportunitied. As is speedily draws to an end we reflect on some of the amazing gifts that have arrived with COVID-19 and the lockdown. 

• In some ways COVID-19 is dress rehearsal for the looming threats of climate change – we now have a unique window to be able to respond to the vulnerabilities hi-lighted by COVID-19. At SEED we have been preparing for disturbance for decades – honing the skills of resilience design, education and practice. We are now well-positioned to support others through education, demonstration and capacity building.

• A light has been shone on the incredible wealth disparity in South Africa and how this plays out into the huge inequality in the food system and the incredible vulnerability of so many of our people. Mitchells Plain was 69% food insecure before lockdown (this means 2/3 of residents go to bed hungry). The COVID-19 lockdown food crises has resulted in soup kitchens and community gardens becoming very important – and we are heartened by the meaningful and hopefully impactful conversations.

• The surge of interest in growing food at home meant that our Easy Peasy enterprise was able to grow into lockdown as we moved from our retail customer base to selling through neighborhood nodes across Cape Town through our new Online selling platform.

• The closing of the tourism industry has meant that our salaries are more attractive. This means we have finally employed an Operations Manager with the capacity and experience needed to systematise our training and move us well and truly into the era of professionalism and growing impactfulnes.

• COVID-19 and the lockdown highlighted our lack of resilience as a species. The result of this is that many more people are interested and signing up for our trainings. (Seeding Futures currently has a waiting list of 165 people.)
  
  
• We have tipped over 50% unemployment nationally as many industries have been bought to their knees. With our economy in flux there is an opportunity to transition to more ecological and robust models of development that will serve our communities and all species more effectively in the future. There is a need to grow meaningful local jobs through supporting local enterprises that focus on growing economic, natural and social capital (circular economy principles).

PROGRAM DELIVERY 2020
We managed to reach the planned four Cohorts of Seeding Futures – despite being unable to teach for 5 months. We accomplished this through:

1. Shortening the training from 19 to 11 weeks.

Making the curriculum responsive to the crises through dropping the household and Neighbourhood Resilience Modules (which relies on broad community engagement) and, being unable to organise job shadows we spent the four weeks working and learning in the resilience systems at Rocklands. 

Applied Permaculture Training (4 weeks) : The Permaculture Design bootcamp module covers the internationally-recognised Permaculture Design Course and is accredited at level 4 (Matric). This teaches and practices the fundamental Permaculture Design methodology.

Personal Resilience. (1 week): We focus on our strengths and practice articulating these, we look at our work/life balance and set ourselves goals. We learn about CV writing and communication skills, including dealing with conflict through Non-Violent Communication. We learn self-care.

Designing My Resilience (1 week) : - We now support students to design their own project, the can be their homes, lives or a project they are working on. Students have had four design trials and now hone their new abilities to improve their own lives or projects.

Skills for Growing (3 days): With the upsurge in demand for locally grown food, we have designed a two-week module that aims to skill up good food gardeners. We cover Production planning and crop rotation for a full year and also thoroughly equip students with the hands-on skills of Compost, Planting and also Propagation. This module ensures our students can produce large volumes of food in an earth friendly way.

On-ground Practical (4 weeks) : We worked the systems at Rocklands – making compost, planting food and. Practicing techniques like marking contours, plumbing rain tanks, building compost toilets and rocket stoves. This familiarity is important in building comfort and confidence.

2.Implementing COVID-19 Compliance

We usually work with at least 25 students per cohort and in keeping with COVID-19 compliance we reduced numbers to 13 (to enable the 1.5m social distancing in the classroom). Working within the rules enabled us to open our classroom doors in August and get busy teaching classes of people very ready to learn how to build resilience.

3. Taking teaching Online

We also spent some of lockdown shooting a Resilience Series that addressed the important issues people were grappling with.

The series got 1346 views on YouTube and allowed us to trial teaching online.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3EiRlzux25lHFY8QxbE6Eg

This is something we will pursue as we are inundated with requests to share our training with more people. Watch this space in 2021.

Links:

• SEED home page