14
Weiveld
Having to feed a child on R2.50 a day is not much. Feeding 400 children each day quickly adds up to a lump sum. LCA offered to help Weiveld School by donating R10 000 towards their feeding scheme at their school, but a quick calculation showed that it will only be enough money to feed the kids for 10 days.
I was shocked to realize that the money we were allocating to Weiveld would not alleviate much of the challenges experienced by the school regarding their feeding scheme, and decided to look for something that would at least take the money we have, much further.
Since Weiveld is an agricultural and hotel school, we decided to look at vegetable tunnels. This will allow the children to use the experience of planting and growing their own vegetables as part of their school curriculum. We started off with one 3m x 9m tunnel, wanting to make sure that it will work before committing another two.
After a slow start the first tunnel was planted and it was possible for the school to start harvesting spinach to be used in the feeding scheme within a few weeks. This success and commitment from the school convinced us that the additional two tunnels will be utilized as well.
Early in 2013 the two additional tunnels were built, allowing the school to utilize the harvest from these three tunnels for the feeding scheme.