Abalimi Bezekhaya

About Us

Abalimi Bezekhaya supports home and community gardens to grow vegetables organically. Our work is based on the following core pillars of support that we provide in the community:

· Providing training and extension services

· Accessible and affordable resources

· Infrastructure support for community gardens

· Market access to promote the sale of vegetables

· Organisational development of community gardens

Our aim is to, firstly, combat poverty by growing food sustainably, using organic methods, at home and in community gardens and, secondly to provide support to the farmers in production planning, soil infrastructure, planning harvests, access to seeds and seedlings, and market access to be able to run their micro-farms as a small business.

Our garden centres are based in Khayelitsha and in Nyanga, and they act as a small nursery where the community can get resources and support. This includes the training venue and demonstration garden as a showcase on what can be achieved.

We partner with active members of the community to support their efforts in greening, growing and bettering their communities. Trainees often use our training to become self-employed as gardeners, gardening assistants and urban micro-farmers.

Our support is provided in the following manner to a range of stakeholders:

· Food security is a strong focus throughout our organisation, starting from a container garden at home through to training on nutrition.

· The production gardens focus more on income generation and job creation to encourage resilience.

· The garden centres provide a direct point of contact for the community where they can buy resources, as well as get training and support.

· The administrative team help to pull this all together behind the scenes and they are based at the main office in airport industria.

Contact Us

News

Cableway Charity Challenge

Join us in making a difference! Our team is gearing up to participate in the Cableway Charity Challenge and we're excited to raise funds for some incredible organisations.

Spring Garden Showcase

This has been a busy year for Abalimi celebrating 40 years of township farming!

Abalimi Open Garden Awards

As you all know, we are hosting "Open Gardens" in Spring, as part of 40th year roll out! Please circulate this if you can’t help.

FARMERS AND CHEFS COOK UP A WILD INDIGENOUS STORM

Abalimi Bezekhaya has been supporting micro-farmers in the townships for 40 years. As part of their anniversary celebration they are hosting this event to connect the farmers and the chefs around the kitchen table.

Abalimi Bezekhaya (Urban Micro Farming)

With soaring petrol prices and cost of food, supporting the organic micro-farming movement through Abalimi Bezkhaya is very important at this time. Rob Small from Abalimi sent the following note:

Target Group & Area

Our target group are living in vast informal settlements, often referred to as townships of Cape Town, where over a million people live, mostly in shacks and matchbox houses. Approximately 40% of its people are unemployed. The majority speak isiXhosa and are migrants from the Eastern Cape – the former apartheid homelands of Transkei and Ciskei.

Our target area is the Cape Flats – including Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Philippi, Browns Farm, Crossroads, Gugulethu and surrounding area. The Cape Flats are ecologically sensitive dune sand areas which contain some of the most threatened floral species within the unique Cape Floral Kingdom, a World Heritage Biome. The sandy soil makes it difficult for growing vegetables, thus we strive through all our activities and projects to conserve and enhance the soil and natural vegetation.

Vision & Mission

Our vision is to support individuals and groups from disadvantaged communities in Cape Town to recognise the link between their survival, health and the active improvement of their environment so that they have the confidence to initiate, replicate and sustain food growing and greening activities. These actions furthermore act as an entry point to other development activities that can improve lives. By forming grassroots associations and networks they will actively seek out and lobby for resources and support, which will strengthen their self-help initiatives in both their rural and urban homes.

Our mission statement is to empower the disadvantaged through urban agriculture and environmental programmes and projects. We support our target group’s ability to replicate their success and transform their lives in their urban and rural environments.