Last year the company contributed R2.4-million to the support of sustainable food security practices through EduPlant - a permaculture food gardening and greening programme and competition initiated and run by Food & Trees for Africa. The programme teaches schools to develop permaculture food gardens that serve as a living classroom and entrench sustainable living skills in the community.

For the third year running, Woolworths store employees will roll up their sleeves and get to work in EduPlant school food gardens in their communities. The volunteer days will take place at 18 EduPlant schools across the country.

Also, for the first time this year, Woolworths is launching another dimension of learning to the programme with the School Market Day Initiative, which sees schools selling the produce from their gardens. It will start out as a partnership with two schools - Hout Bay High School in Cape Town and Pula Madibogo Junior School in Polokwane, as part of an initial pilot.

Woolworths has hosted site tours to expose the learners from both schools to the back-end supply chain operations of the retail environment; showing youngsters how food is produced, distributed and eventually sold. They will be given insights into career opportunities in the retail industry and offered a partnership with local stores that could spur future opportunities.

The learners will also be able to sell the produce from their EduPlant gardens to the public at the Hout Bay Mall in Cape Town and Mall of the North in Polokwane on World Food Day to raise funds for their schools.

Zinzi Mgolodela, head of transformation at Woolworths, says the company remains committed to improving food security in South Africa, by increasing communities’ access to sustainable agricultural practices and resources.

“Food security is extremely important and that is why we have supported EduPlant for the last 12 years. Children need to learn about sustainable living and adopt these practices which they can use for the rest of their lives.,” she says.

“We have made a long-term commitment to support the creation of sustainable food systems or gardens. Through our educational programmes we hope these valuable skills will be incorporated into the teaching syllabus,” says Mgolodela.

World Food Day was founded by the United Nations as an annual event to highlight issues of food security and global hunger. This year’s theme aims to reduce chronic food insecurity and poverty through social protection by ensuring direct access to food, or the means to buy food.

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