Gracie Gardens
Food Security for Our Vulnerable Neighbours
One Garden . One Table . One Community
Community Love Under the Sun
We launched Gracie Gardens in 2015 to provide healthy organic vegetables to the most vulnerable children and elderly of Hout Bay living in shacks across the street from us. As many as 15,000 people there live below the national Bread Line, the most dire measure of poverty in South Africa.
We began by simply planting six bean seeds.
And now, today, Gracie Gardens donates over one tonne of fresh organic veggies every week to 28 community food kitchens in Hout Bay.
It’s a miracle of people working together. People who believe if one of us is hungry, we are all hungry. Volunteers, donors and local Mamas cooking up a healthy pot of love from our organic gardens.
Our Newest Community Project
Our newest community food gardens are being established in a small, semi-desert town in the Klein Karoo. Vestiges of early European settlers combined with Apartheid era divisions invite a beautiful dynamic of people coming together to envision and create a future where all are welcome and thriving; where no vulnerable person goes to bed hungry or malnourished.
We are a broad based volunteer community effort with leadership coming from members of the community who are of the ancient Khoi and San heritage, the First Peoples of southern Africa.
Our first initiative here was launched in 2022 where together we established 86 Family Food Gardens in the back yards of people living in tin shacks and small government built homes. We provided all the seeds, seedlings and compost while the families did all the work of planting and tending their beautiful little food gardens. Our shared hope is that one day most homes in our community will enjoy the pleasure of growing their own healthy organic vegetables, restoring a sense of dignity, pride, health and joy.
And now we are working together on donated land to grow our signature Circle Gardens to supply all of the food kitchens, NGO’s and Medical Clinics that daily touch the lives of the vulnerable children, the elderly and pregnant women in our beloved Village.
We would be so grateful if you would support newest community food gardens! Every bit helps. And everyone can join us! To donate, simply click on this link. You can donate here with your Credit Card or with PayPal:
If you can consider a monthly contribution to help us ensure food for all of our vulnerable neighbours, we would appreciate your generosity. At the end of the day, what we do for our most vulnerable neighbours defines the content of our hearts, doesn’t it?
One Love!
