Food gardening webinars for faith communities: Vanda Chittenden shares her story

Since we started our food garden webinars for faith communities in September, we have been receiving wonderful stories from participants who have been participating weekly.

Last week, Rev Andre Naidoo shared with us pictures of the food garden he has been working on with the community in Cuban Heights/Rondevlei.

This week, Vanda Chittenden from St Mary's Anglican Church, Kingsburgh shares with us the story of how they started with their food garden and realised the bigger community need.

Toti'lly Veg garden was started to grow vegetables for families in need. We care about God's Creation, and as people of God, we are part of the Creation, which makes it important to care for our neighbours, for all people in our community in Amanzimtoti and surrounding areas.

This garden was also our pilot garden to test out, ways of creating monkey proof gardens and to try out the techniques learned during the Food Garden workshops.

Our biggest sponsor is the company that I work for, and they allowed us to use the back garden for the project.

I have since realized that this project is far too small to feed all the vulnerable families, and so we in the process of creating an NPO, and have been given permission to use a much a larger stand on property owned by The Church of the Good Shepherd in Amanzimtoti, that should hold about 10 tunnels.

This new location, will be host to workshops to empower women and children to start their own gardens and what to do with the produce once harvested. From this location, we will be able to provide food to ECD centres, struggling communities and to church groups who provide a regular feeding scheme to the homeless. The workshops will also target a second set of people, the Faith organizations in and around our area, to learn how to set up their own food gardens, which will in turn help feed more people.