In 2008 Ukuvuna, in partnership with a Foundation, trained 50 household members in the Tshidzivhe village, near Thohoyando, Vembe district, Limpopo province. Training covered identification of indigenous trees, identification of mature seeds, methods of propagating indigenous trees, transplanting of seedlings into pockets. After training the household members, they went home and applied the skills we shared with them. After one year we followed up the progress of the assignments we gave them. We found 8 people have already established small nurseries at their households. We then assisted them to protect plants from external forces (wind, sun) as well as transplanting. The group are very committed and have up to now produced thousands of trees at household level. They have also created a collective (cooperative) and are now selling the trees to municipalities and the like. Since 2011 they have distributed back into the environment over 25000 trees.
The core group has now grown to 16 households who are involved in the plant production business unit. They are selling to Government, NPC’s (NGO’s) and individuals, and with extra trees they are reclaiming eroded areas and planting around homesteads as windbreaks. They produced over 40000 trees in the nursery and distributed over 25000 to local municipalities and into their own village to reclaim denuded and overgrazed land.
We taught the community about leadership and they formed their own committee which included a constitution and they selected their own leaders (chairperson treasury, etc.)
The most challenging aspect during development was watering and marketing of the plants. Most members that are involved are women. Youth are not participating yet.
For the future, we aim to upskill some of the learners so that they can share their knowledge with other villages. They plan to register a co-operative.
