Can a forest garden reduce hunger & inequality? In Cape Town, South Africa, at least 10 organisations - including schools, retirement homes & community organisations - are keen to find out. 25 years after Apartheid ended, the city remains one of the most unequal cities in the world, with hunger & poverty widely prevalent. Forest gardens with over 200 species of plants can provide communities with nutritious food, natural medicine & green space in the urban jungle. Donate to help us build them.
In Cape Town, South Africa, extreme wealth & privilege exists cheek by jowl with extreme poverty, hunger & social ills such as violent crime, gangsterism & child neglect. The city's current food system provides rich citizens with organic food at inflated prices, while the poor get by on highly processed junk food, or otherwise starve. Our project aims to disrupt this status quo, by establishing forest gardens in communities desperately needing access to nutritious food grown by themselves.
Rainbow Warriors has acquired expressions of interest from ten Cape Town organisations - schools, retirement homes, non-profits - who are keen to establish forest gardens on their available land. We will conduct workshops to train these programme beneficiaries in the principles of building forest gardens, identify optimal sites, acquire plant materials, embark on the build process & provide ongoing mentorship & training. The result will be an abundance of nutritious food for these communities.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. By establishing 10 forest gardens in one go, this project will mainstream forest gardening as an optimal solution to the poverty, inequality & hunger that remains a defining feature of South African life decades after the end of Apartheid.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
