Riversands Feeding and Gardening Project.

2010-01-24T20:28:00.000+02:00

Lieve Allemaal,

Allereerst wil ik jullie allemaal een heel gezond en voorspoedig 2010 wensen.

Voor mij is dit jaar een beetje verdrietig begonnen, vorige week heb ik na veel nadenken besloten met het Riversands project te stoppen, het was een moeilijk besluit voor me maar de laatste maanden werd het werk in de tuin me steeds zwaarder en vooral het werken in 30+ graden C begon erg moeilijk te worden.

Ik vind het heel jammer en zal de tuin en alle lieve mensen er om heen heel erg missen, ik heb er ruim 6 jaar met heel veel plezier de tuin opgezet en uitgebreid, het is nu een 2000m2 grote tuin die veel groente oplevert voor de voedings keuken van het project.

Ik had nog zoveel plannen voor de tuin, maar helaas ik kan het niet meer, mijn gezondheid gaat voor!

Deze groente tuin was alleen mogelijk door jullie inzet om geld in te zamelen , bekend heid te geven aan deze tuin en al jullie lieve belangstelling , ik ben erg trots op het feit dat deze tuin door hollanders is opgezet en gefinanceerd.

Heel veel dank aan jullie allemaal.

met veel liefs

Maaike.

Lorentz School Leiden

2010-01-24T20:05:00.005+02:00

Aan het einde van 2009 kregen we het goede nieuws dat de Lorentz school inLeiden geld gaat inzamelen voor ons project !!

Geweldig Bedankt.

New home for the compost

2009-10-03T08:03:00.003+02:00

This week we had several boys helping us in the garden during the school holiday, that was great because we had to move the compost heap to its new home and we had heavy work to do in the rest of the field to make it ready for the mielies, pumpkins, watermelons etc to be planted in a few weeks.

A new tunnel for our Hydroponic garden.

2009-09-24T13:42:00.006+02:00

I had a look through our old photos from the start of this project and was amazed at how far we have come in the last 4 years. I also realized that till the beginning of this year all our sponsors were from Holland, so I would like to thank again every one involved with the organizing of funds for this project in Holland.

Here is one photo when we just started and the first seeds went in the ground, the other photo I took yesterday when our first tunnel (donated by Builders hardware) was installed by Robin Good on our 7th terrace over the Hydroponic garden(donated by the students of Grundfos).

Thank you to every one who has made this possible, I cant wait for the summer veggies to come up and bring containers full of butternut, spinach, courgettes, Chinese cabbages etc. to the kitchen for the children's food the next day.

Opening of Hydroponic Garden

2009-09-19T09:10:00.004+02:00

Last month we had the opening of the new Hydroponic Garden, sponsored by the students of Grundfos.

It was a great day for us, all the sponsors who helped to provide the material for this project were there to see the results.

After Dudley Willer and Maaike gave their talks we got to business and planted with the help of the school children and sponsors the first seedlings in the new beds.

Afterwards Milly had a beautiful lunch ready for all the sponsors and students, cooked with the veggies of the

vegetable garden.

Een talenten veiling in de Bosbes Kapel

2009-07-15T11:40:00.003+02:00

Dit jaar was een goed jaar voor de groente tuin van het Riversands voedings project, in een vorige post vertelde ik al hoe de Bosbes kapel onze tuin had gekozen voor hun project dit jaar, Marianne had begin dit jaar een presentatie gegeven in de kapel en verteld hoe we hier jaren geleden begonnen zijn met de groente tuin en de voeding keuken, kort hier na hield de kapel een talenten veiling in de kerk en het werd een groots succes, velen boden hun talenten aan (koken van een maaltijden, geven van muziek lessen, schilderen, oppassen enz.) die allemaal erg gewaardeerd werden en druk op geboden werd.

De kinderen van de kinderkerk maakten allerlei kaarten om te verkopen, er werden zelfs postzegels gemaakt van fotos van de kinderen van Riversands school, die verkocht werden.

In Mei tijdens mijn vakantie in Nederland werd mij tijdens een feestelijke dienst een geweldige check aan geboden voor het uitbreiden van onze groente tuin.

Deze week zijn we begonnen met het graven van de foundation van een nieuwe muur voor het volgende terras, hierna zullen we ook een muur bouwen voor het terras waar de nieuwe Hydroponic garden ligt, we zullen jullie op de hoogte houden waar het geld nog meer voor gebruikt gaat worden.

Nogmaals heel veel dank aan allen in de Bosbes Kapel die zo enthousiast aan dit project gewerkt hebben, door uw help kunnen we de kinderen van Riversands nog meer en gezonder eten geven!

A Hydroponic garden for Riversands school.

2009-07-15T10:12:00.003+02:00

In January I got a big surprise when the students of Grundfos chose the Riversands vegetable garden as their end of year project.

Grundfos already sponsored the Riversands Feeding and Garden project with a new pump, tanks and a computer for the borehole pump.

Now the students asked me what I would need to improve on the garden , Dudley Willer, their manager told me about a project he was involved, years ago in Swaziland where they built a Hydroponic garden for a school.

I had never heard about Hydroponic gardening and went on the internet to do some research, I discovered that if we could start this kind of gardening, we would be able to grow double the amount of vegetables in our garden, if we would be able to do this right , it would make it all a lot easier, I would not have all the troubles with the poor soil and it would solve our problems with the water as long as we would have enough water to top up the tank for the hydroponic garden.

In the long run it would be cheaper to run the garden as long as the students of Grundfos could manage to install this whole Hydroponic system.

In March they presented Shirley and me with 2 different kind of systems,they had all put many hours of work in researching this kind of gardening, we chose one system and all the students went to work to make this into a reality, they begged their "employers" of the companies where they did their in-service training for donations for the materials, piping+connections,tanks (from JoJo), pumps, gravel, thick plastic etc.

In June, while I was enjoying my holiday, they all started to install this new system in the garden, they had chosen a real horrible day to do this, on the wettest winter day we had in Johannesburg this winter. In the cold and rain they started digging a pit where the 2 bottom tanks had to be installed,( Milly made all the photos of this hard work! you see them in the last post.)

I have to thank here again all my garden ladies, who helped here to dig the new beds, Mammas this whole project would be impossible without your help, it is great to have these enthousiastic mothers helping us to make this project a reality, they do this as volunteers, giving so much of their time 4 days a week.

We hope to start this system in the first half of August,when the first summer seedlings are planted in this new garden.

Thank you Grundfos and especially Dudley Willer and his students, who made this possible!!!

The Students of Grundfos

2009-05-08T11:18:00.006+02:00

Visit Marianne Belt

2009-01-06T12:57:00.003+02:00

Last week Marianne and Fam. came to visit our vegetable garden, Marianne started this project in 2004 with Milly Jarvis.

A few years ago they moved back to The Netherlands, but Marianne is still very involved with our project and represent us in Holland.
Last year she gave a presentation in The Juliana school in Bilthoven, this school is collecting money for fruit for the children.
Soon we will be able to give each child a fruit with their meal at the school.
Marianne will also give a presentation in the Bosbes Kapel in The Hague.
This church is sponsoring our project this year, in February there will be an talent auction in the church to collect money for the project, a few weeks before this auction Marianne will come to the Hague to tell about the children in Riversands Primary school.

Summer 2008

2008-12-29T16:01:00.002+02:00

Some of the vegetables out of the garden, Spinach, marrows or courgettes as they are called in Holland, even the last of the kale, boere kool in Dutch.
Thulani is picking the figs, Thulani is now in High school, when he was still at this school he used to come and help to get the weeds out during break time.
This holiday he came and helped to clear out the last of the grass and weeds at the bottom of the garden.

Summer 2008

2008-12-29T15:28:00.002+02:00

A few of our last photos, to show you how green the garden looks after all the rain this month.

We found a giant marrow, it was as big as a watermelon.
The school was closed already, one of the mothers took it home.
Today we reached the end of the field, next year we could be planting the whole field.
We will need lots of topsoil and compost.
Our wish list for the coming year: shade cloth, wall, compost, topsoil, potting soil, lots of seeds.
more tools , irrigation extension.

Summer 2008

2008-12-27T17:20:00.003+02:00

In November we harvested the first summer vegetables, we had many many courgettes, luckily most of them we could harvest before the school closed in December and the feeding stopped till the beginning of January.There are still many butternuts, spinach, beans and brinjals waiting for the school to start again. Many of the mothers who volunteer on the project go home to their families in the rural areas over the holidays, but fortunate for us there are always a few who stay home and keep helping us through the holidays in the vegetable garden, their is always lots of work to do during this time, watering, weeding preparing new beds, new seeds to be planted etc.

When Shirley heard that Gertrude was using some old spectacles from somebody else, she took her to the optician and made sure Gertrude got some new glasses with the right prescription for her eyes.
She is showing them off on the photo standing next to Shirley.

In November Sibongeli got her little baby daughter Gracious Joy, here she is with her big brother Prince. Many of our visitors and early helpers in the garden will remember Sibongeli, she was one of our first volunteers in the project, last year she got a job and left the project, but little Prince is always there to help us in the garden.

Shirley an I would like to thank all our friends especially Henny and Knud Jensen, Marleen Buscop and my mother Marianne Robijn in Holland for all their input, interest and finding of sponsors for The feeding and gardening project, without you the garden could not excist.

A big thank you, we wish you all a healthy new year filled with love and happiness.

Bosbes Kapel

2008-12-27T16:28:00.003+02:00

http://www.bosbeskapel.nl/xhtml/zwo.html
My mother in the Netherlands heard that her church was looking for a project they could sponsor in 2008/2009 , she submitted The Riversand feeding and gardening project and we were the lucky ones to be chosen .
I sent them many photos of the project and in September they started off with the sale of postal stamps with pictures of the children of Riversand school enjoying their food.

By Christmas 1000 stamps had been sold, so the children of Riversand school are traveling on the Christmas cards through Holland this year.

Thank you to Gert-Jan de Raad and all the people involved for all your work to make this project a success.

Gertrude's Birthday

2008-12-27T16:18:00.002+02:00

Gertrude is our oldest volunteer at the feeding project, we celebrated her 75th also in September with cake and dancing.

Spring time

2008-12-27T15:47:00.003+02:00

Spring time is one of the busiest time in the Vegetable garden.
Truckloads of topsoil and compost were carried to
the garden, everyone was topping up the beds, new seeds went in.
Then the watering started, it is still one of our biggest challenges, the water, especially when the seeds has just gone in, the beds have to be watered by hand for the first few weeks and of course we need to have water!!
Many days the tank is empty or the pump does not work or some body at the school switched off the pump, or there is no electricity and then of course nothing works.
The rain only starts in November at the earliest if we are lucky.

Winter months

2008-07-30T14:42:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow is the last day of July, almost the end of winter, in August we can start to put the first summer seeds in, lots of bush beans, courgettes, brinjals, peppers etc

The winter was not too bad, we were lucky with the borehole pump, it worked most of the time, the bottle irrigation is still working very well, we also added a new terrace this winter, we are going to try a new method with this terrace, the no till method.
We put lots of new top soil on top , followed with chicken litter and compost, a few weeks ago we planted some new Chinese cabbage there and it is coming up beautifully.

This last monday we had some visitors from KLM again, Suzanne Jansen and William Gebbink.It was nice to have them and to show them what we are doing here, with feeding the children and to show them how the vegetable garden has grown these last years.
They helped with the handing out of the food and getting the last bit of cabbage and turnips out of the ground and putting some new bottles in new beds.
Thank you both, it was fun to have you here.

winter vegetables

2008-05-10T15:42:00.002+02:00

We have planted many winter vegetables 2 months ago they are growing beautiful, here is a big bed with Chinese cabbage, a very healthy vegetable and easy to grow, we also have a few beds with Kale and Spinach, together with these we planted lots of Turnip and Beetroot.
At the moment the garden looks really great, the ladies have now all there own beds and love looking after them, they work so hard.

Next week there will arrive truckloads of topsoil and compost, It can only be delivered out side the school gates, so all the soil has to be carried in side to the vegetable garden by the ladies, that is next weeks job.
The following week we will start the next terrace all this soil and compost is for this terrace, we will try a new way of making beds, The No Till Way.
Shirley and I went to a workshop of Bill Kerr a few weeks ago, he is awell known vegetable breeder here in SA, he teached us this new way he has been using for the last years and what gives fantastic results.
It will suit us very well because the digging of the beds takes a long time and is very hard work.
Basically you dont till the soil at all, every thing what grows in the soil stays in, we put manure on top top soil and compost and some lime and we put the seeds in, when the veggies are up and finished the roots can stay in the leaves and anything else stay on the soil and we start all over again.
It sounds almost too good to be true , but we will try it out with terrace no six.

2008-03-29T16:24:00.003+02:00

This week we put in the seeds for cabbage , Kale, I thought let try that this winter and it looked a lot like a vegetable, some body gave us and we try to keep going because the mothers like it so much, they called it Zimbabwe cabbage.
So when I bought the packet with seeds I thought great we can have lots now. Then I found out(everyone in Holland ) that it is boerekool, so you see that is how much I know about growing vegetables!!!
But this winter the children at the school will have Hollandse boerekool.
It is also called "Chou Moellier"sounds a lot more interesting then Boerekool.
It is ideal because you dont use the whole plant you just keep picking the leaves off and it will keep growing, I love vegetables like that , Swiss Chard the spinach here is also like that, you just keep on eating from it.
I have learnt so much these last few years about growing vegetables, I hope I can do more companion planting this year and try to plant different vegetables together at the same time so that when the one lot of veggies is finished, the next lot will be ready to be picked.
I want to try not to have any empty bed this year. Hope I will get it right.
If anyone out there has some advice please sent it to me , believe me I can use it.

2008-03-29T16:20:00.004+02:00

HERBS

We have a small hedge of an indigenous plant which bears small clusters of round black berries. A visitor to the school garden pointed these berries out to Shirley last year on a small plant which had grown wild, and said how tasty they were. Shirley was hooked! She remembers a friend’s mother making a delicious jam from the berries many years ago but had never before seen them growing in the wild. The berries were left to seed and the resulting hedge now has a lovely crop of fruit which Maaike and Shirley like to eat (the fruit has a liquorice taste), but Milly says ‘it’s an acquired taste’… so not to everyone’s liking then! I was looking up ‘ringworm’ in Margaret Roberts’ “Indigenous healing plants” because so many of the children have ringworm and I hoped we had some plants in the herb garden with which we could treat it. The first plant mentioned is Solanum Nigrum or Nastergal and this is the name of this berry bush!! Apparently the green berries are poisonous (the ripe fruit is not toxic) and it is these green berries that are used to make a paste. This is then frequently applied to the affected area. The leaf of the Solanum Nigrum can also be cooked with spinach – the leaves and the fruit contain fairly high quantities of vitamin C.

We are trying to encourage the women who work in the garden to make use of the herbs to treat ailments. In January, Margaret used some Wilde Als to treat the after effects of a viral infection and was very pleased with the resulting well being. It was also Margaret who applied a whole clove (the spice) to a sore, loose tooth. The pain disappeared she said, and she forgot about her tooth when she was eating her lunch. To her great joy, the tooth came out when she was chewing! She was delighted that she didn’t have to pay a dentist to extract the tooth for her.

by Shirley Doyle

2008-03-29T11:40:00.005+02:00

The start of this year did not go too well, really I am never happy there is too much water or there is nothing. We had lots of rain this summer, very good of course, but when it rains it rains with buckets, lots and lots of buckets.
When it is not raining it is dry dry dry. and then we have the biggest problem, the school has only water from the borehole and the pump of the borehole is really the problem of our frustration these last few months. If the pump does not work properly we dont have water or very little water and then that water has to go to the kids in the school first ofcourse in this heat they need to drink water , I wont even start on the situation in the bathrooms of the school when this happens.
At the moment it is a bit better and we started to put the new seeds in, I had to wait till we knew for sure we would have at least the first week enough water for the new seeds to take.

2008-03-29T10:22:00.005+02:00

This summer we really wanted to try if we could grow as many pumpkins as we could, last year the ones we planted did very well, so we thought let fill the lower half of the garden with pumpkins, I could not wait to see them grow, but no this year did not go well, perhaps because it was such a wet summer but we only had a few pumpkins this time.
The butternut did better we had planted 2 terraces full of them , they did very very well, also the courgettes or marrows as they call them here, we had lots and lots of them.
But I was really disappointed that the pumpkins did not do so well this summer, whoever is out there and can give me some advise how we can do better next summer please let me know!!!!

2008-03-29T10:01:00.004+02:00

A few photos of Christmas party we had for all the ladies, who help in the kitchen and in the vegetable garden.
This way we are saying thank you to all these ladies without whom we would not be able to feed the children or have a vegetable garden.
These mothers are there every morning at 6am winter or summer and believe me 6am winter time is coooold!
They are all volunteers helping us to give their and all the other children at the school a warm meal.
They work hard and have learnt so much!

Buster

2008-03-29T09:53:00.002+02:00

BUSTER

Buster must be almost a year old now - he has become the ‘kitchen dog’. Whenever one of us arrives at that side of the school, Buster is sure to make his appearance. He is a big dog and unfortunately leaps up at us in greeting, and then nips your bum and feet! After the initial exuberance, he does quieten down thank goodness. He has such a friendly, sociable nature that you can’t help liking him.

By Shirley Doyle

Indigenous Herbs

2007-10-10T15:43:00.000+02:00

Now that spring is here, we have begun putting in more herbs. Unfortunately most of the indigenous herbs that Thoko brought for the garden have died; possible because Johannesburg experiences colder winters than the areas where the plants occur in the wild.

We have put in two new indigenous medicinal herbs:

“Artemesia afra” is one of the oldest and best known of all the indigenous medicines and it is used for a number of ailments. When the mothers who work in the garden saw the plant, they all exclaimed over it, because they know it so well. We’re hoping that once this ‘wilde als’ has grown well, the women will feel free to use it to treat their families.

“Sutherlandia frutescens” or ‘cancer bush’. This is attractive bush with red flowers (July – Dec) and balloon-like seeds. It is also a multi purpose and useful indigenous medicinal plant.

The mothers often show interest about the plants we use as herbs, so we have put three files of information in one of the sheds. These they can use as and when the need arises. When the lemon balm, lemon verbena and lemon grass have grown more, we can introduce the mothers to the delights of herbal teas – beneficial to health and cost effective!

Shirley Doyle

The mothers who volunteer at the project.

2007-10-10T15:02:00.001+02:00

All the mothers who volunteer in the project start at 6am, making breakfast for the children, who come to the school early and dont get any breakfast at home, after that they start preparing the meal for all the 750 children, they eat around 10 am at first break, when everyone has eaten, the plates and pots washed the mothers get their food and relax till it is time to start preparing all the vegetables for the next day.
We are feeding the children now 3 days/week, Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday, on Thursday all the mothers work in the garden from early in the morning till around noon , when it gets too hot.
On Thursday we give all the mothers a bag with second hand clothes for all their hard work.
We always need lots of second hand clothes to be able to do this, these ladies work very hard at this project, we could never keep the feeding kitchen and the garden going without all their help.

So thank you ladies for all your hard work to make this possible.

Spring time

2007-10-10T14:36:00.000+02:00

I cant believe how fast time goes now a days, already October.
All the hard work has started in the vegetable garden, lots of summer seeds have gone in, we want to try to use the whole of the garden this summer.
Only half of the garden is now terraced and have beds for the plants, the other half is still wild and full of grass and weeds, we have put many old car tyres in this part and will grow the fruit baring plants in the tyres, we tried a few tyres last summer and it went well with the pumpkins and watermelons.
There must be about 70-80 tyres now and every few weeks we will plant a few more seeds in the tyres, hopefully we will have plenty of pumpkins, butternuts, marrows, watermelons and melons this summer season long.

All the mothers worked very hard these last months, we made new compost heaps, all the old tyres moved to the lower part of the garden for the use of the fruit bearing plants this summer and we built the new heaps with the pellets from the Lovell Industries.
We ordered lots of new compost and ofcourse are also making our own.

A statue for our vegetable garden.

2007-07-30T13:39:00.000+02:00

Marleen Buscop, my friend in Holland who puts a lot of her time and effort into finding sponsors for our vegetable garden, made this beautiful statue for our project. It was sold for 250 Euros , what wil go towards the vegetable garden.

Thank you Marleen not only for this statue but also for your ongoing work to find new sponsors and tell people in Holland about our project here.

A Big Thank You to all our volunteers.

2007-07-30T12:47:00.001+02:00

A big thank you to all our ladies , with out their hard work our vegetable garden would still be a bare dry piece of land full of weeds,
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HARD WORK. !!

Our soil is full of stones, the ladies dig the beds with piks and spades and sift the sand so that all the stones will be out of the soil, it is hard work especially in the winter when the ground is hard and dry, this winter they digged all the beds in the 2 new terraces.

Is there anybody who can give me advise how to tackle the problem of overflowing water tanks, is there a way to stop the pump when the water tank is full?????

We "pay" our ladies with secondhand clothes, if there is anybody who wants to donate clothes for our ladies please contact me.

Thank you to our sponsors and helpers.

2007-07-30T12:29:00.000+02:00

Thank you Grant for putting in the irrigation in our new terraces and thanks to Nic and Aidon , Mabel and Sigizele for building the new compost heaps with the pellets from Lovell Industries, thank so much Allison it looks so much neater with the pellets.

This month we received the money from the Protestante Kerk in Leidschendam in Holland, they collected this during the Easter period. Thank you so much, this will make it possible for us to plant the whole garden this summer, we can put in many truckloads of compost, what our soil desperately needs, it will pay for all our summer seeds, we need new garden tools, spades, forks, hand tools etc.
Thank you all !!!!! You all helped to feed 750 children for this year.

2007-07-04T11:24:00.000+02:00

It is already 2 months ago that we let you know what is happening at Riversands.

In May we had a problem with the pump of the borehole at the school,( we dont have municipal water here only one borehole) the pump broke and then ofcourse there is no water, can you imagine 750 children in the school and there is no water, just think only of how the toilets would look like!!!!!!!

The Village church in Lonehill , donated the money for repairing the pump, luckily a few days later that problem was solved.

In the garden the terraces 4 and 5 have been built and all the beds are almost digged, this last weekend the irrigation was put in, this month we have to get all the beds ready for the summer seeds to go in .

We also sorted out our compost heaps, Lovell Industries donated lots of pellets to built around our compost heaps , it looks a lot neater and is easier to control. Thanks Allison.

I am looking for some body who knows about water tanks, our tanks are connected to the borehole, but I have a problem that when the tank is full, it still keeps pumping water up and ofcourse the tanks overflow, a lot of waste of water but it also damages the brick work around the tanks. As far as I know we need something like a floater in the tank that will warn the pump when the tank is full and then stops pumping. It would be great if there was any body out there who could give me some advice on this!!

New walls for terraces 4 en 5

2007-04-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

This month we could start with the building of the walls for terraces 4 and 5,we hope they will be finished by the end of April, then in May we can put the seeds in for our winter crop.

This month we had a really nice surprise from the Protestante Church in Leidschendam in Holland, they had held a fasting collection for our Vegetable Garden during the 40 days to Easter.

Their gift of 2500 Euro will help us with building a wall for a new terrace 6 , we will be able to put the irrigation in the new terraces 4,5 and 6 and I hope we will have enough to be able to make a better housing for our compost heaps.

Thank you all so much for your generosity!

We also like to thank Jenny Page and her students from Redhill school for their help in the garden and with the feeding this month.

Your help and interesse in our project is very much appreciated.

The Herb Garden

2007-02-04T18:15:00.000+02:00

One of the project ideas was to get the children involved in the vegetable garden. Unfortunately this is not very practical – school hours are precious and should be used to cover the school syllabus. A bus collects the children from their homes and drops them off just before school starts. Again at the end of the school day, the children leave by bus. So no time for gardening!

We thought perhaps the teachers might be able to use the garden in their lesson plans, and we hope to explore this idea during 2007.

Another idea evolved concerning indigenous plants. It seems almost 70% of the children have a Zulu background, and we discovered that one of the mothers, Thoko, (she helps in the kitchen and in the garden), is a sangoma. (A sangoma is a practitioner of herbal medicine, divination and counselling in traditional Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi) societies of Southern Africa -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangoma).

At the beginning of 2007, Thoko brought back some plants from her home in Kwazulu Natal, and has planted these in a small area on the first terrace. We hope that with the assistance of the teachers as part of a lesson, she will instruct and educate the children about the medicinal use of these plants according to the Zulu culture.

Visit Martinair Technicians

2007-01-31T06:43:00.000+02:00

On Monday the 22 nd of January we got a lot of help from 9 Technicians of Martinair.
Hans Katoen from KLM' s Wings of Support had organised a working trip to Johannesburg for the technicians, we were very lucky to have some help with the ceiling in the safe house of CLM in Diepsloot and with the feeding of all the children in Riversands Primary school and digging a few beds in the vegetable garden.
Thank you all so much.
I am every time again surprised about the kindness of people, even from so far away, to come and help and work hard in a place and for people they dont even know! and for free ofcourse.

2007 starts with great news!

2007-01-13T20:37:00.000+02:00

At the start of this new year we heard that the money from ST.ABCD has arrived.
St.ABCD is a Dutch organisation who looks for sponsors for projects of Dutch people in third world countries. My friend Marleen Buscop in Holland had applied for the vegetable garden to be put on their list, we send in a letter about what we are doing here and yes we were accepted, the rest of the work was done in Holland by Marleen, thank you so much Marleen thanks to you we can start soon with building our next wall for terrace 4 and put the irrigation in there as well.

We would also like to thank all the ladies of the Soroptimistclub Leiden-Aurora for donating to our garden, thank you so much for your generosity.

Heel veel dank aan alle vrienden en familie van Marleen en myzelf die hebben bijgedragen aan het geweldige bedrag dat we van St. ABCD ontvingen aan het begin van dit nieuwe jaar.

A Big Thank You to all the people who has been so help full in the garden in 2006

2006-12-31T11:10:00.000+02:00

This year we started with a garden overgrown with weeds, due to the heavy rains this past summer. The grasses were standing shoulder high till the gates.

Thankfully we received a lot of help with cleaning it up, to get it ready for planting our winter crop.

Firstly there was the KLM crew spending a full day pulling out the long grass.

RED HILL SCHOOL.

Then during the April holidays there was Jenny Page with her group of students from Red Hill school. They arrived with extra tools, seedlings to plant and lots of eager hands to take out the next load of long grasses..

AMERICAN SCHOOL

In May , Elizabeth Love offered to come and help with her son Lucas and a group of students from the American school to do their community service in our garden, twice a week they spent the afternoon after school in the garden.

They really cleaned the garden out, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH we could not have done it with out all your help.

Another big THANK YOU has to go to Maaike’s good friend in Holland ROSE BROSHUIS, she got all her friends and family to donate towards our garden.

We have been able to build new retainer walls, put in an irrigation, gutters on the roofs of the kitchen and the art room to catch the rain water and a pump to pump the water from the tanks to the garden. Lots and lots of compost for the second terrace.

Thank you all so much for your generosity.

In June we got more good news, another of our wonderful Dutch friends Hans Katoen and the KLM Document Center and Navigation Employees and the Bos and Vaart Primary school in Haarlem (Holland) donated R8706 which has enabled us to get 2 truck loads of topsoil and labour to dig our 3rd terrace which will give us another 25 new beds ready for planting of our summer crops in August.

To all of you a” Mighty Big Thank You”- without your help it would not be possible.

We also like to thank Michael Smith for growing and donating many of our seedlings and Ken Reid for donating fertilis, vegetable plants and earth worms and always being there for advise.

Thank you to our 2 new volunteers Shirley Doyle and Debbie Speller without whom it would not be possible for me Maaike to do all that is needed in the garden. Shirley and Debbie we really appreciate your commitment and reliability in assisting us in the garden.

Thank you all so much for your generosity !!!!!! From Maaike and the CLM team

One of our great sponsers

2006-12-31T11:04:00.000+02:00

KLM crews keep on coming

Every now and again we get flight attendants from the KLM helping us to prepare, dish up and hand out the food. In March we had a big group of KLM people, which enabled Vanessa and Alex to gain more experience once again at facilitating such a large group of volunteers. It is also wonderful that the KLM crews are so faithful in their support of the project and we gladly welcome more of these enthusiastic, hard working visitors.

Thank you KLM staff & Wings of Support for your wonderful & generous support.

Official opening of our Kitchen

2006-12-31T10:51:00.000+02:00

On Tuesday 28 February 2006, we celebrated the ‘official’ opening of our kitchen at the Riversands Primary School and therefore also the start of our feeding project. Although we already started feeding the children in November last year, we had not officially launched the project yet and waited for the feeding process to run smoothly and without hick ups. In February we felt confident enough to allow all our sponsors and friends to come and watch the feeding process in full swing and to our delight, many of them did. The continuous rain in February gave us quite a headache and we were worried that we might not be able to feed the children at the kitchen. It had already happened once in January that we had to bring all the food down to the classrooms and dish up in the classrooms, which is not ideal! But fortunately ‘Plan B’ was not necessary because the 28^th turned out to be a fine day with even a bit of sunshine to add to our festive mood.

Most of our guests arrived around 9 am and were welcomed with tea, coffee, biscuits, delicious milk tart (made by Milly!) and freshly baked scones with jam and cream. Maureen, who runs CLM’s children’s shelter in Diepsloot, woke up very early to bake the scones for us and THAT we could taste. Thanks Maureen, your scones were enjoyed by everyone! As usual, we fetched the Grade 1-5 pupils from their classrooms around 9h25 and they arrived at the kitchen in a surprisingly disciplined manner, many of them holding each other’s hands. Normally we have great difficulty to let them walk instead of run to the kitchen but apparently they wanted to show our visitors that they do know how to behave. Groups of them sang a few lovely songs while waiting in line to wash their hands and to receive a plate of food with a roll. We served rice with a stew of minced meat and lots of fresh vegetables and we could all see that it went down very well. During second break, when we fed the Grade 6 and 7 pupils, many of them even came back for a second serving. In between the two breaks, the school choir treated us on some beautiful songs, while clapping and dancing.

We started feeding!!

2006-12-31T10:36:00.000+02:00

We ended the year by feeding the Riversands children one day a week for the month of November,2005

Some days we were able to feed 500 children, some days all the children. We saw that when we gave the children soup we were able to feed all 750 children and then when we served stew and rice 400 children. This was because we did not have enough pots or food.

In December, 05 Wings of Support from Holland kindly sponsored the purchase of three more 60L stainless steel pots and a lovely 30L electric urn which should really help us to have enough vessels now to be able to cook for all 750 kids. So a mighty big Thank You to Wings of Support for their generosity.

The Children of Riversands Primary

2006-12-31T10:16:00.000+02:00

In June 2003 Milly Jarvis, together with a couple of Dutch ladies, started to make a vegetable garden at the Riversands Primary school after she saw that a lot of children attending this school are from the informal settlements of Zevenfontein and Diepsloot and are suffering.

There are approximately 700 disadvantaged children and 40 preschoolers attending this school, often having very little or nothing to eat for breakfast.

Three times a week they receive 2 slices of bread with jam at school via the government feeding scheme and for many of them that is the only food they have that day.

The project’s main objective is to supply these children with a cooked, nutritious and healthy meal every day so that they have the energy to listen and learn at school.

The latest brain research reveals that nutrition has a tremendous impact on the functioning of the brain and on children’s behaviour. The vegetables from the garden will be used for the meals and the rest of the ingredients will be bought and sponsored by suppliers.

The second objective is to teach a group of unemployed mothers how to cook healthy meals by giving them the opportunity to cook in the kitchen and at the same time to teach them how to make a vegetable garden, so they can make their own at home.

The third objective is to teach the children how to maintain and tend the vegetable garden, and to teach them that nothing in life is for free by requiring them to do odd jobs in and around the garden.

CLM would like to instill a good working ethos in these children.

How it all began!

2006-12-30T16:50:00.000+02:00

A few years ago I met Milly Jarvis and Marianne Belt, they told me about a project they were starting at the Riversands Primary school in Diepsloot( a settlement NW of Johannesburg South Africa).
They wanted to start a feeding kitchen to give the 750 children at the school one hot meal every day.
There was an old farm building at the school that we could use, late 2005 they had renovated the building with the help of Lee-Ann Manas and many sponsers.

At the same time we started a vegetable garden to grow the veggies for the meals, we met with many many problems the first 2 years , the biggest one being the rain washing the soil away
during the raining season in South Africa.
The piece of land next to the kitchen, where we are growing the vegetables is lying on sloping ground and each year the rain would wash the ground away during the summer rains and during the dry winters we would carry buckets of water up and down the hill to water all the vegetable beds.

We had no sponsers yet and were just struggling on, but it felt as if we had to start each year all over again.

Till August 2005 when I took a friend of mine, Rose Brockhus to see the project, she had a plan, for her 50th birthday she asked her friends and family to sponsor the vegetable garden and wow they did!!!
With the start of 2006 we had enough money to built 3 walls for the first 3 terraces and to put a bottle irrigation in+ lots of compost and new seeds.