The Chairman’s Fund, one of the dedicated instruments used by Anglo American to channel its corporate social investment, has formed a partnership with nongovernmental organisation Soil for Life to increase food security in the Western Cape.

The initiative is making a substantial and significant difference in the lives of people living in the province by encouraging them to sustainably grow their own vegetables.

Western Cape-based Soil for Life encourages people to create green growing spaces in unfriendly and often dangerous areas. The organisation strives to improve household food security, thereby also creating a sense of goodwill and ownership in the community and protecting the environment.

To date, 1 598 people have been trained to start their own food gardens, with almost 10 000 people directly benefiting from the initiative.

Statistics indicate that 60% of home gardeners are still tending their food gardens. More than 1 162 people have benefited from the organisation’s life-skills training programme.

“As the majority of Western Cape households are food insecure, Soil for Life’s home food-gardening programme and skills development workshops make a sizable contribution to poverty alleviation and ensures that people have access to food,” says Soil for Life operations director Pat Featherstone.

The organisation educates community members on how to manage low-cost production methods that yield large amounts of vegetables, fruit and herbs from small spaces using very little water. These methods include gardening without using harmful chemicals to produce small-scale organic food and herbs.

Through the initiative, people also learn how to improve the soil and recycle waste, as well as nursery skills and plant propagation. Soil for Life also teaches people about nutrition, food processing and preserving. Their entrepreneurial skills are further improved by teaching them how to set up local markets and run a small business.

Meanwhile, Soil for Life also offers the train-the-trainer programme, which trains committed and promising home gardeners to teach and support others in the community. Funding from the Chairman’s Fund has enabled the organisation to further develop and strengthen this programme and its other programmes, explains Featherstone.

Chairman’s Fund chairperson Norman Mbazima, who is also the CEO of Kumba Iron Ore, says the fund was named the top corporate social investment grant maker in South Africa for eight consecutive years. Assistance from the fund has, since its establishment in the 1950s, ranged from small grassroots initiatives to major capital building projects and large-scale service delivery programmes, in partnership with provincial and national authorities.