Siyakhana Food Garden - a model to address food insecurity in Southern Africa

Overview

A Model Food Garden

Food Security

Sustainable Urban Design

Building Skills and Capacity

Research

Project Objectives

Improve the lives of people living with AIDS and their dependents by supplementing their nutritional programmes
Increase the knowledge of nutrition in the local communities
Provide the community with practical experience in food production and natural resource management
Reduce the incidence of malnourished children attending ECDCs and adults receiving HBC

Project Achievements

A garden that produces a range of foods and medicinal plants
Conserve water and other natural resources
Plant, process, harvest and prepare food for optimal nutritional value and income
Practise proper food safety, personal hygiene and sanitation practices
Nursery, green house and pond for harvesting rainwater
Harvesting vegetables, herbs and grains for distribution to beneficiaries
Setting up irrigation systems and producing compost
Training and work opportunities for children from shelters/unemployed youth/adult farmers/private

The Siyakhana Initiative

“The main aim of the Siyakhana project is to establish a model urban agriculture initiative that showcases a food garden system for food production, education, research, and empowerment of the community, through training, employment and income-generating opportunities.”

Siyakhana (which means building one another) is a project based at the Wits Health Consortium and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Siyakhana promotes health in the urban, peri-urban, and rural settings.

Siyakhana’s flagship project is the Siyakhana Permaculture Food Garden . Beyond the garden we undertake activities to meet the following objectives: Siyakhana Food Garden

To improve availability and accessibility of nutritious sustainably produced food by promoting the local production and distribution of healthy food.
To build evidence-based knowledge by conducting research on the intersection of food, nutrition, and urban agriculture.
To raise public awareness, facilitate the exchange of knowledge, and stimulate social change through training and raising awareness.
To improve the sustainability and healthfulness of the built environment by offering high quality ecological design consultancy services.

The Siyakhana Initiative, formerly the Siyakhana Food Garden project within the Wits Health Promotion Unit, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, is now a division of the Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Ltd, a wholly owned company of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Siyakhana - A Model Food Garden

Siyakhana is an example of a successful permaculture garden. What was once a patch of ugly inner city ground has been vividly transformed with permaculture gardening techniques and a great deal of effort!