Project Report
| Aug 7, 2015
Thank you for your support!
By Jenna Stone | Marketing Manager
Thanks to you, this project is now fully funded. We're working on all sorts of fun projects in our gardens - planting seeds & watching them grow, watering our veggies, and even learning how to make compost! Our 68 chickens are laying eggs for us to use in our Feeding Programme and for community members to purchase. Our ten pigs are growing rapidly and escape from their pen on almost a daily basis, despite our best efforts to keep them contained. We think they're just feeling a bit left out of all the fun & games ;) Our vegetable gardens are looking fantastic! We've got spinach, cabbage, and peppers, and are planning to add more to our garden at our Community Centre soon.
Your generous contributions will enable over 400 children in Grades R-11 to learn how to garden - a vital skill for children in area that suffers from entrenched poverty and high rates of malnutrition. For that, we thank you wholeheartedly.
With gratitude,
Thanda
May 11, 2015
Say hello to our little friends...
By Jenna Stone | Marketing Manager
Our new friends
Have you heard about the most recent additions to our Community Centre? Thanks to your support, we've now got pigs! Funds from this project helped us to purchase 6 pigs that recently gave birth to 7 piglets with more on the way. The piglets will live in our newly built piggery at our Community Centre and, once they've matured, be sold to local farmers as part of an income-generating project for our educational and agricultural programmes.
Every day, children in our ECD Programme walk down to our pig pen to count the piglets, talk about what colors they see, and what noises pigs make. Our Grades R-7 learners interact with the pigs and start to develop an appreciation for the environment, while our high school learners focus on the tactical and strategic side of starting a piggery business.
These learning opportunities would not have been possible without you! Thank you for your continued support with this project.
Piglets in our brand new piggery
Counting the pigs!
Feb 10, 2015
Grade 10 Learners Get to Down to Business
By Jenna Stone | Marketing Manager
Working in the garden
The Nqolobane Garden is a 25m x 15m plot of land that is situated next to Nqolobane High in a valley surrounded by rolling hills and sugarcane fields as far as the eye can see. It is a place where learners in our After-school Programme come to learn, have fun and get their hands dirty (quite literally).
Last year, our Agriculture Director worked with a group of twenty-eight Grade 10 students to teach them a variety of organic gardening skills such as how to prepare soil, the value of crop rotation, and how to grown their own seedlings. The time they spent in the garden learning practical skills through our After-school Programme bolstered the theory they were learning in the classroom through Nqolobane High, and their efforts in both would be graded.
To spice things up a bit, students were split into teams of four and each group was assigned one plot of land within the Nqolobane Garden. Each team grew the same crops - potatoes, beetroot, and carrots - and at the end of the school year, the group with the most successful plot of land received the highest marks for the project. Although all the teams did well, there was one clear winner...may we present to you the 2014 Nqolobane Gardening Champions!
Cricket break!
Relishing in the fruits of our labour...
Don't drop that tire!
The winning team!