World Food Day 2022
This World Food Day we turned the spotlight on the community
of Embalenhle in Mpumalanga, answering the call of Phumelelani
Savings Scheme. A generous donation was made to NGO, Food
& Trees for Africa (FTFA), who helped identify our beneficiary
and helped us bring this initiative to life.
The Phumelelani Saving Scheme project was started in 2020,
during the lockdown period when many people lost their jobs.
The project was started in response to the dire financial situation
many community members found themselves in as a result of the
covid pandemic. The project leader, with the support of the
project members, decided to start the food garden as a way of
creating employment for themselves. While the aim of the
project is for the members to earn a living, a higher focus of the
project is achieving food security within the community. The
garden members have worked hard to develop their garden and
with the support of Bettabets, the garden has progressed
positively.
Intense 4-day training was provided by FTFA to the garden
caretakers on permaculture principles and sustainable
agricultural farming that can lead to income-generating produce.
Thus, not only providing food for the community, but also a
means of earning an income.
The training workshops, tools and planting materials received
had been a great motivating factor for the garden members of
Phumelelani Savings Scheme who are working hard to teach the
community the importance of self-reliance and how agricultural
practices can afford each person, family and community the
ability to be self-reliant while contributing to food security.
As Bettabets, we are in awe of the amazing work being done by
Food & Trees for Africa and would like to commend them for
their hard work in the area of agriculture and food security. We
also want to send a huge shout out to our team of Bettabets
volunteers from our store in Mall at Emba who gave all their love
to the planting of the garden.
On the weekend of 18 July 2022, over 600 people were impacted on this special day of giving for Mandela Day. Bettabets, in partnership with Europa Art and Change Agent SA, helped feed families a hot meal, supply basic food essentials and refurbished a vegetable garden for the communities of Kliptown and Moletsana Park in Soweto. Food, water, gardening tools, seasonal vegetable seedlings and compost were contributed by Bettabets towards the initiative helping scale its impact. Our team of volunteers brought their smiles, energy and soul to help spend the day looking after our communities. In Madiba’s words, “There can be no greater gift than that of giving one’s time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return” and our team of volunteers certainly felt honored living the legacy of our father, Tata Madiba.
