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Help us SEED a Climate Resilient Cape Town

We in The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia are supporting this project and would like you to consider supporting the great work Seeding Futures are doing in Cape Town. They started a fund raising campaign hoping to expand their outreach and influence more lives through their mentoring and training programs. 

 

Seeding Futures unlocks the immense potential of our unemployed youth to contribute to the resilience economy and enhance city-wide resilience. We’ve facilitated the program five times (with incredible results) and now seek to reach 100 Cape Flats youth per year for three years, connecting Alumni to work and exploring the potential of designing and growing a resilient Cape Town. We have secured 80% of the funding for the first year – help us to reach 100% and manifest this dream. 

The Project: 

SEED has spent the last 16 years pioneering the work of growing Outdoor Classrooms, for delivering the curriculum and food security in under resources schools. The program started in the Cape Flats and achieved national reach between 2009-2012. The program impacted thousands of teachers, learners and school communities.

The Seeding Futures youth program has grown out of direct request from students in our school programs for further education and green jobs.

(We’ve developed the current program through fine tuning it while facilitating five cohorts over the last six years. The program is developed in line with the governments National Development Plan, the scarce skills list of the SETAs as well as learnings and feedback from Facilitators, Program Alumni, Assessors and Employers of our graduates.)

We’ve reached 118 youth with the following incredible results:

  • 105 graduates have implemented climate resilience practices in their homes and practice water, energy and food resilience.
  • 105 graduates have supported a further 420 households to implement resilience practices at home at a ratio of 4 extra homes each.
  • Viral  resilience education in various forms of a further 49 324 people at a ratio of 418 people educated per graduate.
  • 78 graduates have secured life enabling income streams through full time work, self-created enterprise and multiple part time income streams.
  • Three youth-led enterprises launched employing eight youth.

We now seek to grow the impact of this program by reaching 300 Cape Flats youth (over three years) and by finding the levers and partnerships to grow this training into an alternative Matric that gives the 50% of learners that drop out another chance.

 

THE PROGRAM

Seeding Futures is 19 week and Accredited skills program that builds climate resilience skills in unemployed youth and connects them to the positive action they can take building climate resilience in their communities and connects them to work opportunities in the resilience economy.

1.     ACCREDITED SKILLS PROGRAM

Accredited Permaculture Training (4 weeks)

Permaculture is an optimistic design system that uses Ecological principals to meeting human need. It holds many of the solutions to the Climate crises we are facing and can be applied to whole cities, farms, homes and even balconies. The first four weeks of the program focus on learning Permaculture design in a range of situations.

The curriculum covers ecosystems, soils, water, energy and plant systems as well as the principles and practices of good design applied to a variety of contexts. This module is SAQA Accredited, with participants also receiving the, internationally recognised, Permaculture Design Certificate.

The Assessment of The APT is incredibly thorough and ensures that participating youth have the knowledge and hands on ability to design and implement resilient systems. This is a requirement of being an Accredited Trainer provider and ensures that we deliver world class training. Participating youth have testified to the incredible value of the assessment.

Youth map swales on contour as part of passive water harvesting strategies that replenish the Aquifer

 

Personal Resilience (1 weeks)

The focus here is equipping youth to position themselves for work:

We work on vocational strength analysis with feedback, we grow leadership through wilderness immersion and we unlock some of the trauma that holds us back while visioning the lives we are capable of.

Household and Neighbourhood Resilience (6 weeks)

Household Resilience focusses on designing and retrofitting homes to be resilient to the shocks and stresses associated with Climate Change. We design water, energy and food resilience and consider temperature management as well as waste management, fuel and medicine.

There are visits to two working demonstration homes and the design and implementation of resilient systems through Permablitz’s into 16 Mitchells Plain Food Freedom homes per year. (A Permablitz is the climate resilient transformation of a home in a day (or two) with design and implementation led by Seeding Futures youth and community members.)

Neighbourhood Resilience looks at how we build neighbourhood resilience and design our settlements to withstand shock and disturbance and with the services cut. We explore international and local examples of best practice and look at social and city mapping and then the application of Permaculture design principles at a neighbourhood level. This leads into a design challenge for groups of students and culminates in the best eight design being implemented per year. This impacts on the resilience of Mitchells Plain, starts to create a demonstration of what is possible for neighbourhoods in the face of climate change and also gives students hands on skills and confidence to replicate this important work.

Job Placement (8 weeks)

Through working with the Strength Analysis tool, as well as the CV writing process and regular mentoring, we now place participants in relevant work experience through our partner networks. These are made up of Civil Society, Organic producers and other green businesses.  This gives real hands on experience to our students and stimulates the local resilience economy.

We prioritise Job Shadows that have employment opportunities and, in this way, have secured many graduates work. The benefits to the resilience economy network is that they are taking on youth that are educated and equipped and have proven their commitment to this work.

Job Shadows bring all the learning into real experience and boost the local resilience economy.

2.     TRAINING OF TRAINERS

Facilitators identify participating youth that are interested and have the aptitude to teach and invite them to the Training of Trainers Five Day workshop. This participatory and hands on workshop is delivered by an experienced Teaching Mentor teaches methodology, methods of learning and sees youth preparing and delivering lessons to a range of audiences.

The Mentor then supports youth over the year to grow in confidence and ability. The aim is to grow a base of teachers that can deliver this course and also enables training enterprises that deliver resilience education to a range of audiences.

We employ Alumni Facilitators  to deliver aspects of the program, they are comfortable with. This is essential if we are to grow a broad base of confident and competent resilience teachers.

3.     ROCKLANDS RESILIENCE CENTRE

Seeding Futures operates out of Rocklands Resilience Centre in Mitchells Plain where we have demonstration gardens, three running enterprises, a household resilience model, a nursery, an Outdoor Classroom and a new Classroom, built to deliver the program. This is an incredible asset to the training as we learn in established systems. It also serves as a Community Resilience Hub that supports the rollout of resilience practice into a neighbourhood that needs it.

4.     ALUMNI NETWORK

SEED sees the relationship we start with our beneficiaries as long term. All graduates are welcomed to the Alumni network, which meets for bi-monthly workshops that grow peer support and connection to relevant opportunities for further work, education and guide the voice of township youth in terms of what is needed for under-resourced communities in facing the realities of climate change.

Alumni teachers in action. Seeding Futures grows teachers from within – thereby growing more work for our beneficiaries and preparing for national impact.

 

Milestones

Tipping Point (R22 000) :  Supports one young person through the full program.

Dream funding Goal (R105 000) : We can roll the program directly impact 100 Cape Flats youth.

 

FundRaising website below : 

https://www.thundafund.com/project/seedingfutures

 

The Team 

SEED is an award winning Public Benefits organisation that has spent the last 16 years pioneering the work of growing Outdoor Classrooms, for delivering the curriculum and food security, in under resources schools. The program started in the Cape Flats and was implemented nationally between 2009-2012. The program impacted thousands of teachers, learners and school communities.
The Seeding Futures youth program has grown out of direct request from school leavers for further education and green jobs.

Website : https://www.seed.org.za

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/SEED.community/

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