Building water tanks, to create a self-sustaining vegetable garden at Rise Above Development’s (RAD) Youth Centre in Lavender Hill, was a joint effort between residents and 13 footballers all the way from the University of Florida.
Nawaal Weitz, SA director of Beyond Sports Tours, who hosted the team, says Florida Gators football members were on a service trip to help a community in need. The team represents the university in the American college football.
Weitz says they partner with universities in the United States of America (USA) and host many groups like the Florida Gators.
“They come to SA for around seven days and they give back to the community. We also partner with local NGOs or a community for our universities to do whatever they need assistance with and in this case, it is to build water tanks.
“Currently, we have 13 footballers and they are aged between 18 and 22 years and four staff members that are their chaperones.
“We have partnered with Flow, an organisation that is the Love of Water and they introduced us to Rise Above Development (RAD).”
Flow builds water tanks in various communities, primary schools and rural areas.
The Gators member Savannah Bailey said they were in Cape Town to give back and serve.
“We come out and do service work to instil a greater sense of world community, to understand different cultures, different ways of life, different ways to give back and serve.
“We are a very privileged group and create a lot of leadership in our own communities, so if we can help spread that anywhere else in the world we would like to.
“We have 13 of our American Football players and four staff members, all hard at work just trying to help in any way that we can. We had the opportunity to partner with Flow to create greater access to water for different communities, including Lavender Hill.”
She added that people in Cape Town have been very welcoming.
“The people of Cape Town have been extremely welcoming, and very knowledgeable. It is nice to work along and beside people who will benefit from the work that we are doing and our guys like children, so as the kids come home from school, our big kids become little kids again.”
RAD CEO Lindsay Cessford said they were very excited to start the project of building and completing the first water tanks at the centre.
“We are very excited to have all the football players here from Florida. We were brought this project through Earth Artists, who introduced us to Flow.
“We are building our first of three water tanks. So they are going to be the first of many. We are very much looking to make this centre sustainable, especially with everything that is happening with load shedding.
“So, we are looking to get solar panels as well for the actual buildings to keep this space very green and sustainable, but this is the start.”
She added that the team has been working very hard alongside the community to build the 1,8 m tanks.
“We did a pre-build to get everything prepped for the guys coming from the States, the community members we have been paying to work with us and help build.
“It’s been a big collaboration between the community, Flow, Earth Artists, Healing By Nature and RAD.
“There have been a lot of people to get us where we are now.”
The water tanks will be primarily used for the garden that is yet to be created.
“Eventually, we would like to become completely self-sustainable, but for the moment, for sewerage and stuff like that we need to use the City. But this is to start our gardens which is really exciting.
“We got our first water well last week, supported by the Department of Agriculture, so we’ve had some assistance from them.
“We are looking to have learning gardens and growing vegetables for the café that will then provide meals for the children, but it’s also going to be a learning space.
“We are looking to do a female farmer development programme and junior farmers, so there are lots of plans for these gardens,” said Cessford.
