The City of Johannesburg donated the seeds that were collected from business community and employees of the City to child-headed families, cooperatives and schools at different home based organisations in Soweto.
The City of Johannesburg launched the Seed Collection campaign earlier this year and called on citizens and its employee to join hands in a fight against hunger by establishing food gardens to feed and create jobs for the disadvantaged families.
The seed collection campaign is an integral part of the city’s food resilience and promotion of urban agriculture in the city
The City aims to mobilise individual households, small entrepreneurial farmers, large supermarket chains, farming cooperatives in an efforts to eliminate the scourge of hunger and ensure healthy, stable diet for communities.
Member of the Mayoral Committee for Health and Social Development in the City of Joburg Nonceba Molwele, said, “As part of the countdown to the Metropolis Meeting that was held in Johannesburg attended by delegates from 120 of the world’s leading cities from July 16-19, the city launched the Seed Collection Campaign.
“This is an initiative that sought to rally residents to join hands with the city and fight against hunger and food insecurity and provide a source of end meets to many families.”.
The Seed Collection campaign urged citizens, city employees, and private companies bought seed packets from suppliers of their choice and donated to the City for distribution to disadvantaged households, cooperatives and schools to create food gardens.
“The Seed Collection Campaign was one of the ways in which the City contributed to the theme of the meeting: Caring Cities, the campaign reinforces Joburg’s 2040 Growth and Development Strategy, which builds a collective and shared vision of becoming a vibrant, equitable African city with a resilient and adaptive society.
“However, more importantly the campaign signified one of the steps that the city is taking to give life to the Agriculture and Food Security Programme, and a larger food resilience agenda – one of the city’s 10 priorities, aiming to address poverty and inequality by generating employment and sustainable livelihoods, ” said Molwele.
