Welcome
Harvest of Hope (HoH)
Boxes of freshly packed vegetables grown with love and care to the highest organic standards in the food gardens of Cape Town’s townships. 25 years ago Abalimi Bezekhaya planted a seed of hope. That seed grew into abundance, the abundance overflowed into a harvest of plenty, the overflow became ‘Harvest of Hope’, where the goodness can reach the homes of many more.
Abalimi is based primarily in township communities like Nyanga and Khayelitsha, where they encourage self sustainability and teach them to grow their own vegetables to feed their families. Organic vegetables are now grown in hundreds of gardens in the townships to sustain the communities. Abalimi works at any one time with over 50 community and institutional gardens and hundreds of home gardens. There is more than enough to feed the families and a growing excess which is sold locally or given away. Growers have little access to outside markets to sell their high quality produce.
Harvest of Hope has provided a new market for excess produce. By collecting from all the various gardens involved, making up extraordinary vegetable boxes and taking them to schools where parents collect them for their homes.
Who are the growers?
The local township groups are each made up of 3 to 8 farmers. Most of the growers are women, anxious to feed their families. Typically they farm plots the size of the average classroom, with each group working between four and twenty plots.
These growers are able to provide for their families and hope to sell the rest of their crop. HoH provides firm orders at predetermined prices. The growers are excited and are setting aside prime parts of their land to grow exclusively for HoH. We started at the beginning of 2008, first establishing 120 boxes. We are now working up in stages as more seeds are planted. The more boxes needed the more square meters they can plant and the more they can earn.
Schools provide the ideal marketplace for the HoH weekly vegetable boxes.
Cost of the boxes:
A full box of a range of seasonal organic vegetables to feed a family costs R95 per week. (Smaller families can share a box). This can be paid termly at R1235 or monthly at R380. Debit orders are usually the easiest.
How does it work?
Families sign up for HoH, indicating their interest and preferences.
Families make their first payments in advance and pay a deposit for their HoH box.
HoH delivers family boxes of freshly picked vegetables to selected schools on one day per week for parents to collect when they fetch their children.
Each week they return their box and collect their new box of fresh veggies at the end of the school day.
This, as a project will, in time, encourage more people in the township area to grow their own vegetables and become self sustaining with a secure market to sell their excess.
We are honoured to be a part of this project.
Have a look at the Abalimi website…