STNA

Two years ago, I traveled to South Africa as an International Youth Ambassador with Toronto-based NGO: LetsStopAIDS. At the time, LetsStopAIDS was on a special project, entitled Spread Trees Not AIDS. The mission was to the raise awareness about the environment and HIV/AIDS.

Along with a fellow ambassador, I was placed in the small community of oSizweni, which is just outside of Newcastle in North Western KwaZulu-Natal. We were working at a community centre called KwaHilda. Over the course of several weeks, we held workshops on HIV/AIDS, the environment, leadership, sexual health, and hosted a community clean-up where we filled an entire dumpster with at-capacity garbage bags.

Two of our big initiatives when we left were: to start a community garden to feed not only the children who attended the community centre of KwaHilda, but members of a support group for People Living With HIV/AIDS; and to start a Youth Executive that would be responsible for giving talks in the community on HIV/AIDS awareness.

In order to start the garden, we had an enormous plot of land tilled.



This land used to be a garbage dump and the soil was pretty much ruined. Fortunately, KwaHilda community centre produced a lot of vegetable waste that was able to be composted and used as fertilizer. Additionally, we had donations of manure from several local farmers.

Although we worked hard, we were only able to dig one or two beds for future gardens. We had to explain to KwaHilda how they should proceed if they wanted to continue with this project.

To be honest, I really didn't know how the garden would end up working out. In South Africa, projects that are sustainable but don't churn out results immediately are not necessarily looked after. People in these rural communities are starving and have no money. They want results right away! So to leave our garden in such an early stage, not even having planted anything, seemed to be a bit of a gamble.

Well, three months after I left, the garden looked like this:



I couldn't believe how much work these guys had done!! I was almost brought to tears when I saw that picture.

One year later, summer of 2010, the garden looked like this:






This year, summer of 2011, there are two International Youth Ambassadors back at KwaHilda for 5 weeks! Here is a recent video of the garden I helped to start.

I'm so happy with the results of this garden...The KwaHilda Community Centre in South Africa has done an absolutely knock-out job of keeping up these gardens. I'm so proud of them. I can't believe this little project on a plot of land on the other side of the world that B.H-C and I started two years ago is still bearing fruit.

Puts a giant smile on my face :)