“Poverty is just a lack of resources.”

Gately Rotary was approached in 2020 for a donation of R100 000 to support 52 household gardens in Chintsa East. The household gardeners were identified during the COVID 19 national lockdown as growing to support their household and/or sell. A proposal was prepared to support these growers with mesh, poles, wire, fence nails, garden tools (fork spade, spade, hoe, wheelbarrow, Hippo roller), seedings and horse manure to improve the quality of the soil.

The project took over 12 months to implement, largely due to the original Project Manager gaining employment elsewhere, and needing another implementor to step in.

The approach taken was to visit each garden and revise their needs list, check if they were still gardening, and confirm a reliable cell phone number. As each area was visited, an order for resources was put in and delivered to a central venue in the township, and gardeners were required to collect and sign for their garden provisions.

No gardening advice was provided. The gardeners knew what they needed, and we ordered accordingly. Most gardeners were visited more than twice (some multiple times purely to admire their gardens) and to confirm resources were being used.

The project has been completed with some outstanding and surprising outcomes.
Seeing the incredible results of pure hard work and grind by our gardener partners has been awe inspiring. There is much to see beyond the village gate.