Novus Holdings is the most comprehensive commercial printing and manufacturing operation in South Africa. With its headquarters in Cape Town, the Group operates 11 plants in key metropolitan across South Africa. Thanks to the Future Foundations, a Novus holdings Initiative, the Call 2 Care organisation set out to implement The iGardi Project at the Marconi Beam Primary School, allowing for 197 students to be fed daily with a strong focus on ensuring local community involvement, training and ownership. On the 24th February 2017, a landmark event was held where the Novus Holdings team set out to lend a helping hand by flexing their muscles to build drought resistant food gardens at the Marconi Beam Primary School. The Marconi Beam Primary School is situated less than a kilometre away from Novus Holding’s Montague Gardens offices and facilities.
Today, the Marconi Beam Primary School faces numerous challenges for its 1633 students ranging from literacy obstacles, school funding shortfalls. Above all, a major obstacle to the quality of education attained by students each day is ensuring that the students are fed. "The current feeding scheme can only provide subsidies for about 450 pupils per day making the selection process challenging. The selection process involves enquiring in each classroom whether any children are in need of a meal. The youngest children are selected first and the food quickly runs out,” says Mrs Plaatjies, Principle of Marconi Beam Primary School. The most prominent obstacles hindering a child’s learning process is hunger and can prevent students from making the most of a formal education, no matter how hard they try to ignore its effects. Hunger can have physical and psychological effects on young students that make learning substantially difficult. Calories in food provide energy to carry out regular day-to-day activities. Without an adequate amount of this energy, students may fall asleep in school or lack the energy to pay attention to an entire day of classes. This also has an impact on the general health of students and ensuring consistent school attendance.
The iGardi Project's objectives for the Marconi Beam Primary School are as follows: - Implement 12 drought resistant food garden boxes to allow the school to grow food sustainably in order to feed 197 students daily with fresh and organic produce.
- Stage a gradual handover of maintenance capabilities including organic seedling development in full support of the Call 2 Care team over a 1-year period. The 1 year maintenance period will ensure the school are trained to be self-sufficient and to be supported from harvest to harvest. This includes a handover of earth worm farms for composting, greenhouse seedling development materials for propagation, educational posters and training guides for in-classroom educational purposes.
We want to extend our utmost thanks to the Future Foundations, a Novus Holdings Group initiative, for making it possible for us to educate, develop skills and engage with the community. Your organisation's commitment to making a sustainable difference to the communities that you operate within leaves our hearts full of gratitude! Thanks again for making all of this possible! We would also like to show some appreciation to all the volunteers from the Joe Slovo community, Call 2 Care Volunteer Organisation and Novus Holdings staff members that came together and joined in on the fun!
Event images: The iGardi Project
Beneficiary: Marconi Beam Primary School
Location: Joe Slovo Township
The iGardi project is a fun and unique way to help increase the diversity of food and nutrition in underprivileged communities through our proven model for sustainable food gardening that educates and empower individuals to benefit their community. The iGardi Project's mission is to plant 100's of Self Watering Food Garden Boxes within South Africa and host a number of educational programs to ensure that anyone is able to build these gardens cost effectively. By connecting volunteer teams, providing avenues for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), we ensure local community involvement, training and build community ownership. In order to achieve our mission, Call 2 Care host monthly build events with the general public and host a number of custom corporate team build events. Visit our page to learn more about The iGardi Project and how you are able to support our mission. For custom corporate sponsorship packages, please contact info@call2care.org.za.
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