Umthathi Training Project facilitates the establishment of organic vegetable gardens, using readily available natural resources.
Included in process of developing the vegetable garden is training in health, nutrition, business skills and home-based health care.
Umthathi Training Project facilitates the establishment of organic vegetable gardens, using readily available natural resources.
Included in process of developing the vegetable garden is training in health, nutrition, business skills and home-based health care.
All our programmes focus on promoting healthy living and our nutrition training focuses on very basic information, such as how to eat a balanced diet and why this is necessary.
Our health training introduces participants to personal and home hygiene, non-communicable diseases, how to eat to avoid/manage communicable diseases and when and where to seek professional help.
Umthathi has also introduced a project for growing local indigenous plants in the gardens. The training during this project includes teaching the names of indigenous plants, how to grow them and what their importance and uses are. We discuss how protecting biodiversity can help counter some of the effect of climate change, as well as conserve medicinal plants.
Home remedies using local plants are also discussed with community groups, many of which use natural remedies before they seek medical assistance or use commercial medicines.
The project has trained approximately 3 500 pupils in 40 schools and approximately 600 community members. The objectives of Umthathi’s Healthy Living Programme include:
1.Ensuring food sovereignty so that people are able to produce their own food in a sustained and self-determined way and are able to feed themselves nutritiously by planting their own vegetables, as well as indigenous and medicinal plants;
2.Ensuring health security by helping people understand the important relationship between nutrition, hygiene and home-based healthcare, and how this can improve the health of their families;
3.Ensuring livelihood security by training people to engage in secured diverse livelihood strategies;
4.Ensuring people understand and are able to cope with the adverse effects of climate change;
5.Encouraging the protection of biodiversity and understanding its link to traditional Xhosa culture and heritage.
