Help us develop an organic farm in Walmer township!

The Lim'uphile Agricultural Organisation has been growing fresh organic vegetables for more than 10 years on a former dump site in Walmer township. Today we need your help to purchase the site from the owner, in order to continue our actions and grow further! Once the plot aquired, together with saga, a French NPO, we will build a training centre for the youth of Walmer to learn agricultural skills, as well as a little store and canteen where we will serve delicious food made from the garden!

..... More about the project

Help us to continue growing organic vegetables in the heart of Walmer Township!

For more than 10 years, we have been growing organic vegetables on a former dump site in Sakhasonke Village, in Walmer, Port Elizabeth. Having the passion for growing our own food, we worked hard to make this site a proper garden which can currently feed more than 50 people! Today, we need your help in order to purchase the site from the owner and develop a long-term project: creating a training centre for the youth of Walmer. Our youth faces many issues (unemployment, substance abuse, gangsterism, etc.) and we believe that by giving them new skills, we can change lives, and contribute to uplift our community!

The first step of our project is to secure the land and therefore to purchase the site from the owner. This step is critical as it will give us the freedom of developing our initiative in the long term. Once this done, we will partner with Collectif saga, a NPO and group of architects, who will assist us in designing and building a new structure on the site. The small building will host a training centre, a small shop where anyone can buy fresh organic vegetables at affordable prices, as well as a nursery and a small restaurant / canteen where you can sit and eat delicious meals made from the garden! This structure will enable us to train more community members on how to grow organic vegetables and start their own garden on their plot. All these producers will be part of our cooperative, and we will share resources amongst the members of the coop.

And don’t worry, the building will not impact our beautiful existing garden, we will carry on growing our delicious vegetables on the site!

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The end goal: a new building for the cooperative

Currently, we are running the cooperative from our homes, as we don’t have a proper space on the plot. With this new building, we will first of all be able to have a dedicated space to run the cooperative and organize our work. But more than that, this new structure will host various programmes:

- A workshop room to organize group training. This room can be used by the community for events, when there is no training

- A small shop where community members and outsiders can buy fresh vegetables

- A small canteen / restaurant where anyone can enjoy a fresh and healthy meal from the garden at a low cost

- A resource centre where any of the members of the cooperative can access information but also tools and natural inputs and products to help their farming

- A nursery to grow our own seedlings

The building will be used to spread the initiative: it will be open to everyone that wants to learn and support the project! In order to promote homegrown food production, we will organize workshops for community members that are willing to start their own production. We will then help them set up their garden at home and integrate them in the cooperative. This way they can also sell part of their production in our shop and generate extra income!

Part of the production will be be sold in local restaurants and shops, in order to generate more income and sustain the cooperative. For the rest of the production, we will continue what we have always done: selling it at low cost at local markets within the community!

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How will we use the money donated?

If we reach R50,000, we will be able to secure the land and start the process with Collectif saga to design and build the cooperative building.

With R100,000 we will be able to equip and furnish the cooperative building once finished, and start training community members on how to grow organic vegetables from their home!

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Who are we?

The Lim’uphile Agricultural Organisation is a NPO made of six community members who share the same passion about growing their own food. We are operating from a 5,000 square meters site in Sakhasonke Village in Walmer, Port Elizabeth. The main focus of the cooperative is to produce vegetables to encourage the community to eat healthy at a very low cost. We conduct various awareness campaigns on healthy eating in order to instil better lifestyle within our community. Through skill training, our aim is also to address unemployment and poverty, and particularly amongst the youth of Walmer. Our goal is to grow further in order to be able to provide more opportunities for young people in our community who are experiencing extreme poverty.

Created in 2014, saga is a collective of architecture from Nantes, France. United through the same passion about architecture, art and landscape, saga is open to everyone that longs to create new dynamics within those fields. We believe that architecture should overcome its own boundaries, meaning that it needs to come out of its traditional context and slowly become something more universal. For that, we try to get involved in singular contexts, using architecture as tool to shine a light on individual and collective situations. Our tool is the act of building, physically, engaging our bodies and minds in the realization of every project. The group wants to promote the idea of architecture being a cooperative act involving various fields, the common goal being to create better and meaningful cities. saga, since its inception, has been involved in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and more especially in the communities of Joe Slovo and Walmer.

Fore more info about saga, here is a link to their website!