Section 27(1)(b) of the South African Constitution states that everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water. However, the number of people living in extreme poverty is on the rise and, as a country, we are not winning the battle against poverty. It is recorded that more than 50% of South Africans live below the poverty line. This figure gets worse in rural communities, and especially on rural farms and, in reality, it is the poor that continue to suffer, face humiliations and remain hungry. Poverty is real. Hunger does exist, and the extent of it is growing.
In 2018 we started a 0.5ha community food garden with the generous support of AFGRI and facilitation by Kinderfond MAMAs. The reason behind Auntie Judith’s Food Garden is simply that we do not want to spend our lives raising money to feed rural farm families, however we want the rural farm families we support to have the means to eat every day.
Rural Farm Children Fed Daily:
rural farm children and youth have received daily fresh vegetables on their plates before they do their homework.
Households Fed Weekly
We have also been able to provide 65 households with a fresh bag of vegetables on 10 farms every week
Judo Competitions Funded:
The profits from Auntie Judith’s food garden fund the children’s participation in judo competitions.
The growing need for food is real, and our aim is to always have food available to eat, share and sell at affordable prices so that our children can continue with their JUDO programme.
We can now say that 47 rural farm children, 28 women and 65 households on 10 farms have learned to eat fresh vegetables simply because they grow it themselves. The children are learning the names of the vegetables in both Afrikaans and English, and they are practicing their basic Maths by counting how many vegetables are growing.
It is true what they say, that when people meet nature and live together in harmony, they feed positively off each other. This is our goal with Auntie Judith’s Food Garden.
