Community Fund – Guba – July Update

Our national independent newspaper, Times of Swaziland, printed articles about our Permaculture training project on a full page of the newspaper in colour last week (July 27th)! It marked a great day organised jointly by Guba & the project participants to celebrate the last week of training with Guba in low-cost, low-maintenance food production within homesteads. Reflecting the Permaculture ethics of combining care of the Earth & People with the principle of sharing: Sharing food, seed, knowledge with family, friends & neighbours to strengthen not only resilience within your homestead but within your community too.

The trainees spent a morning role playing how they could best respond to potential information requests from community members before local MP, Marwick Khumalo, & Robert Magongo MP arrived with other community leaders & a Times of Swaziland reporter for a tour of the Guba farm & natural buildings. This gave each participant ample opportunities to practice sharing their knowledge which has particular relevance to their planned community Open Days & Graduation ceremony which they will be in charge of organising over the coming weeks.

Although their project graduation hails the end of a year’s training & one-on-one support, we will continue to visit each trainee over the next 2 years to offer support & updates where needed. We feel reassured that we leave each participant with a fully functioning Permaculture homestead & the knowledge to produce healthy food for themselves & their families. We are proud of our trainees for all that they have achieved & are grateful for all that they have shared with us over the last year. We have learnt a lot & our Guba family has more than doubled!