Project Summary

66% of all children in South Africa live below the poverty line but particularly black children in the rural areas, this was extremely exacerbated during Covid.

In 19yrs over KTD196 has trained in excess of 3,828 children in Food 4 Life Permaculture training. This means nearly 4,000 households have been able to feed themselves with self-sustaining Permaculture practices. The number is much higher than this as individual children have participated outside of formal Food 4 Life projects we have hosted to address Food Security issues. This project runs throughout the year however the children decide when or if they want to participate in the process.

More About what we do

During Covid the issues confronting KTD196, the staff, children and their families and communities were many and varied:

1. Loss of income resulting in hunger
2. Loss of schooling resulting in children failing
3. Increased poverty related to job loss
4. Increased food insecurity and hunger
5. Increased transmission of Covid due to lack of adhering to restrictions i.e. social distancing, mask wearing, sanitizing
6. Increased Gender Based Violence and Femicide
7. Increased fear and hopelessness.

Keep The Dream196 was able to respond to all of these needs through the foresight of the management and our ability to pivot from a community development organization to that of a temporary community welfare organization. Hunger became the greatest threat, not Covid.

We trained over 500 children during the lockdown period in vegetables gardens which were sustainable and often where the only source of vegetables for the families for 5months during level 4&5 lockdown. We targeted particularly the impoverished families without access to SASSA grants as being able to move about freely was very limited and we needed to be strategic.

Through sponsorship from our partners and individual donors such as WE CARE MOTHER AFRICA, Global Giving donors, Tropical Pharmacy, The Epap Foundation, through Penny and her Family we were able to provide 200 food parcels and 2.8tonnes of Epap to families throughout out the lockdown period. We also provided training and supplied seeds to develop food gardens which enabled families to meet their own needs for fresh vegetables. Through our partners we were also able to provide clothes and blankets as last year was extremely cold.

Every time we went to the communities we were greeted enthusiastically, people felt alone, scared and isolated. We brought hope!