One hundred and twenty five aspiring entrepreneurs have started growing trees to support their livelihoods in the Sobantu community near Willowton in Pietermaritzburg. The Natal Witness is supporting the start-up of the Indigenous Trees for Life Programme there, on their doorstep.
Indigenous Trees for Life is a Wildlands Conservation Trust programme that began in 2004 in northern Zululand. It offers opportunities to people in needy communities to help themselves.
Participants are shown how to grow trees from seed and nurture them until they grow to a certain height, at which point they are traded back to Wildlands in exchange for groceries, uniforms, bicycles and other items such as wheelbarrows, Jojo tanks and cement.
Mary-Jane Qinsile Hadebe, a community member selected to work as facilitator to develop the Indigenous Trees for Life programme here in Sobantu, has already signed up a number of learners and adults: “I go from door to door and explain about the alien plants which take too much water and which will create a drought. The indigenous trees are much better and we need the people to grow trees for us to plant, and those that are not working or the children after school will care for the trees,” she said.
“If you work hard you can get school fees, some groceries, and maybe build onto your house. If you work hard you get more.” Hadebe said. There are already 125 young people signed up and who should start to reap the benefits in the coming months.
Andile and Wandile Mkhize are thirteen year old twins from Sobantu and look forward to trading some trees to help pay for their school fees. Wandile said “Growing trees will make our village clean.”
Hlengiwe Mthembu is the project manager for the Pietermaritzburg Indigenous Trees for Life Projects. “We have had such success in Sweetwaters and SWAPO with some tree-preneurs already growing trees in their hundreds. With The Natal Witness as a partner in Sobantu we look forward to developing another group of enthusiastic tree-preneurs who can help green their communities,” she said.
Thakane Motebang, General Manager of The Natal Witness said: “Our business is based in Willowton and we therefore chose a community in the vicinity of our trade. On many of our visits to schools in Sobantu, we encountered aspiring individuals keen to make a difference in their community, and this project offers an opportunity for families to generate a livelihood based on the amount of effort they put in to grow and “sell” indigenous trees.”
“In the newspaper printing and publishing business we use paper, and this project will produce indigenous trees for planting, another good reason for us to support the project,” said Motebang.
There are 23 such projects across KwaZulu Natal, Mpumalanga and Gauteng, and more recently the Western Cape has projects at various stages of development.
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)