Environmental Sustainability: Feeding Schemes
The aim of the feeding schemes is to help poor communities grow their own vegetables with little (if any) capital required. These implementations consist of three parts - a veggie tunnel, organic wormeries and a rain catchment system.
The Business Challenge
The primary purpose of a feeding scheme implementation is to assist struggling communities in becoming more self sufficient, enabling them to feed themselves and thereby alleviating poverty. However, there are many principles that can be taken away from such an implementation, for this reason it is beneficial to consider the implementation within a learning environment.
Our aim is to create a self sustaining feeding scheme that can be implemented in poor communities where people currently do not have the capital to start or sustain a veggie tunnel.
The Solution
Our implementation includes a number of aspects which work together to create an easily understood logical and natural system, demonstrating and teaching the concepts of limited resources and sustainability.
The implementation consists of the following components:
- The veggie tunnels that IQ creates can hold over a thousand spinach plants (usually the vegetable of choice), which can be used to feed the community.
- Since these poor communities cannot afford to buy fertilizers or pay for the large quantities of water required to water the plants, IQ creates a wormery – which provides the compost and fertilizer.
- A water tank, which is set up alongside buildings, so as to capture rain water from the roofs, to be used to water the vegetables.
Our complete system implementation (veggie Tunnel, wormery, rain catchment and recycling) demonstrates fair, responsible and efficient use of resources. It encourages the idea that people must become a conscious part of the solutions to the problems we find at a local and global level.
The Challenges
- Requires large start-up capital
- Labour intensive
- Requires large amounts of organic matter
- A dedicated person needs to follow up on it regularly
The Benefits
- Uplifts and feeds the community
- Enables communities to become more self sufficient
- Contributes towards alleviating poverty
- Empowers the communities
- Skills Transfer
Why The IQ Business Group?
Our underlying belief is that initiatives which we get involved in need to be sustainable and need to allow us to develop a long-term relationship with the organisation we are assisting. Our continued support and dedication from our volunteers has resulted in the long term sustainability of our efforts and the success of the various Feeding Scheme’s we have implemented.
IQ has successfully implemented a full feeding scheme incorporating the construction of veggie tunnels, organic wormeries and rain catchment systems in the following organisations: Westrand Veteran’s Association; Skeen School; Orange Farm; Berakah; Vuleka