Who are we?
Goedgedacht Care for the Planet forms part of the POP (Path onto Prosperity) Program of the Goedgedacht Trust. Our focus is on developing creative ways to encourage rural communities to Care for the Planet, while also taking ownership for their communities, especially their food security at a household and community level.
We believe that food has the potential to ignite community spirit and be a major force to shaping the lives of communities.
There is a long, rich history of agricultural skill in the rural communities we serve in the Western Cape. By working with the skills and assets people already have we support them to do what they know & benefits them directly. We have started to build a movement of people taking control of their food system at a community level starting in their home.
We also have our own biodynamic/Permaculture/Organic vegetable gardens here on the farm. The surplus from these gardens is distributed to our local partner organizations who distribute the vegetables to deserving families, crèche and community projects.
What we do
Community Food Gardening: This project is headed by Jafta Hendricks who uses a combination of the CCE- (Community Capacity Enhancement) approach combined with an ABCD- (Asset Based Community Led Development) methodology to build relationships with the 14 rural villages between us and the community as well as strengthen relationships within the community by encouraging the formation of gardening groups. We are always on the lookout for new development tools to strengthen the local food system through increasing food production at a household level. This in turn supplies the community and generates an income for the gardeners. It also builds relationships and that’s the key to transforming communities.
Basic Project Management Training: We are always keen to do things differently, find a new way and with this approach we think we have the beginnings of it. We believe that community members know best what to develop and how to do it. The old model of an outside organization coming into a community and decided what must be developed and how, just doesn’t produce the transformative results we want to be part of. So we have turned that idea on its head and are training youth, POP Centre managers and community member on the basic processes of conceptualizing, developing, implementing and reporting on their own projects. The Basic project management tools teaches the foundational steps for developing a viable project that builds social capitol, strengthens local leadership and allows community members to take on issues like food sovereignty at a grassroots level. In time this will grow into being our core function as we support what the community does to shape itself.
In addition to these core projects we also have a few other tricks up our sleeves, these less known projects serve a variety of different age and gender groups and some even bring us little income. These include:
Permaculture Training: Twice a year we host workshops where we invite people from all over to spend time learning how we apply the ethics and principles of Permaculture to develop a multitude of practices that shape our gardens. If you are interested in learning more, we are happy to custom make workshops that will allow you and your group to get to understand the basics of permaculture by seeing them in practice.