Indigenous Trees for Life takes root in Vosloorus

Nombuso Sibiya grins at her pile of groceries, purchased at the recent “tree store” held in her community. Rice, maize meal, cooking oil, tins of beans and fish, soap, matches and sugar. Nombuso is sixteen years old and is in grade ten at Ilinge High School in Vosloorus. She is one of four siblings and her single mother is not working. “Growing the trees helps families to get food.” she says.

Nombuso is a “tree-preneur” in the Indigenous Trees for Life Programme where children and adults in Vosloorus are growing indigenous trees from seed until they reach a certain height in order to trade them for goods such as food, clothing, school uniforms and stationery, as well as wheelbarrows and hippo-rollers for collecting water. The conservation NGO the Wildlands Conservation Trust has been running this programme in KwaZulu Natal since 2004, where it has over 20 communities growing around 300 000 trees each year. The tree stores are markets set up for the tree-preneurs to spend the credit notes they receive when Wildlands collects the trees they have grown. Wildlands then plants the trees back into the community or into forest restoration programmes.

The Vosloorus project is the first Indigenous Trees for Life project located in Gauteng. Unilever South Africa  has partnered with the Wildlands Conservation Trust on projects for many years, and so when they  requested that the Vosloorus Thokomala home be used as the starting point to establish a tree growing project near their Boksburg factory, Wildlands got to work in September 2008, and subsequently rolled out the project in the community.  In 2004 Unilever had established a Thokomala Home in the Vosloorus Community; Thokomala homes are community family homes for children orphaned by HIV and Aids, a project originally founded by Unilever and since 2005 operating as an independent section 21 company.

The first tree store in Vosloorus was held in August 2009, with 29 tree-preneurs trading with 831 trees. The amount spent was R 2077.50.The latest tree store where Nombuso purchased her groceries, had a value of R 26 330, with 8068 trees being traded by the now 291 tree-preneurs. The phenomenal growth of the project in this ten month period reflects the need in this community for opportunities for employment and development.

Wiseman Tshabalala is a facilitator with the Vosloorus project and his role is to identify those in his community most in need of this opportunity. He then teaches the individuals how to grow the indigenous trees, and mentors them in the process.  “The latest tree store has raised the interest in the project even further. There are many unemployed people in our community and when people saw tree-preneurs buying wheelbarrows full of groceries with their credit notes, they wanted to know how to become tree-preneurs”, said Tshabalala. “Being a facilitator has expanded my knowledge in community work. Working with young people I am learning how to help them not only with the tree growing but with skills for life, which is very rewarding.”

Picture: Nombuso Sibiya, a “tree-preneur” with the Vosloorus Indigenous Trees for Life Programme, shows off her goods purchased at the tree store held in her community recently.

Tree-preneurs explore biodiversity first-hand at Cumberland Nature Reserve

A group of learners from the Buffelsdraai and Osindisweni communities near Verulam just north of Durban spent a weekend at Cumberland Nature Reserve, a private reserve in the Table Mountain area just east of Pietermaritzburg, as a reward for growing over 250 trees each in the Indigenous trees for Life Programme, a livelihoods programme that sees children and adults from vulnerable communities learn to grow indigenous trees from seed and nurture them until they reach a certain height, at which point they trade them for goods.

Known as “tree-preneurs”, the young people aged between 10 and 18, learnt about the environment and for many of them, this was a first-time experience of a nature reserve. Manqoba Sabela is the Environmental Educator who takes the groups of tree-preneurs on these excursions. “The trips are to reward and motivate the tree-preneurs, we teach basic ecology and aim to create an understanding of conservation as a whole.”

“For this excursion we used biodiversity as a theme, as 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity.” said Sabela. The tree-preneurs went to a riverine forest area in the reserve and recorded all that they saw, from plants to insects and birds and animals, and looked at what biodiversity is. There was a hiking trail into a wilderness area where no urban sounds can be heard and the learners were asked to listen and think about how the sounds were different from their homes. Sphelele Majola, a seventeen year old from Buffelsdraai said: “I really enjoyed the hiking, it was fun and I saw lots of things such waterfalls and impala. I wish I lived in such as place where only nature things take place.”

Sabela says these trips are meant to be fun, but also expose young people to learning and to environments they might never otherwise experience. “The tree-preneurs have learnt the rewards of growing trees by being able to buy household goods for their families, and school uniforms and stationery for themselves. These trips are a further reward, but also teach them about what they are contributing to the environment by growing indigenous trees. They learn why an indigenous tree is better than an alien tree species and we explain the value of the trees being planted into their communities.”

Wildlands Conservation Trust runs the Indigenous Trees for Life programme in over 20 communities in KwaZulu Natal, and also plants the tree-preneurs’ trees into reforestation projects. One of these is in a buffer zone next to a landfill site in Buffelsdraai, near where this group of tree-preneurs live. Romeo Mxolisi Sibiya, is ten years old and lives in Osindisweni, and he enjoyed the biodiversity activity because “it showed me trees are important in our lives.”

The Bonitas Medical Fund, a long-standing supporter of the programme, provided funds in 2009 to the Wildlands Conservation Trust for the purchase of a Toyota Quantum, to transport the tree-preneurs on these environmental education excursions. Since September 2009 the “tree-preneur carrier” has taken more than 389 tree-preneurs on such visits, including these Buffelsdraai and Osindisweni teens.

Picture:  These young “tree-preneurs” learnt about the environment at Cumberland Nature Reserve as a reward for each growing 250 trees in the Indigenous Trees for Life Programm