Africa-Press – Eswatini. The coming of the new season has seen Uhuru Garden in Makholokholo Peri-Urban Community being a hive of activity.
youth from seven communities in Eswatini under the UNDP GEF grant were carried out by KusasaRising Living Systems Organisation have been hosted to a three-day camp.
Sandile Dlamini from Lundzi expressed his joy over the empowerment sessions. “I strongly believe that with agriculture we can slow down the rate of youth unemployment, especially if we can learn the principles of permaculture that allow us to farm naturally, while also taking care of our planet and coming up with ways to produce in the face of climate change.
What I have enjoyed most about our training is learning about the entire value chain. We are focusing on a group project that will lead to us having a value chain that we as the youth can supply and also be part of the production process depending on which part of the value chain we are contributing to.
What we urgently need are commercial sized machines because coming out of our three day camp, we are skilled for this entire value-chain of processing our cosmetics range using the umsutane herb as well as being equipped to process our edible food products and oils.
We learnt by doing and now know how to do these processes in a quality assured way,” said Dlamini.
The KusasaRising Living Systems Organisation launched its project on May 29, 2023 at Uhuru Garden in Makholokholo.
“We have been awarded a Grant by the UNDP under its Global Empowerment Fund to rollout a Train The Trainer programme. We have been working with these seven communities in Eswatini, namely Makholokholo, Mpolonjeni, Mantabeni, Lwandle, Lundzi and Qomintaba and Nhlambeni since March 2020 when Covid-19 lockdowns were effected.
We started off as self-funded. Then we had a collaboration with GirlBoss Beauty with a Purpose brand and then ultimately we received grant funding from The Mandela Washington Fellowship under the Leveraging Innovation in Communities (LINC) grant, as well as the UNDP GEF grant that we are currently rolling out.
The UNDP GEF grant is meant to capacitate our youth in these communities that have been identified by their chiefs and community leadership. Our project is for a period of 12 months,” said Syndi Khathwane Ntombini, from KusasaRising Living Systems.
During the first and second day of the ignition camp to ignite infinite creative potential, Mncedisi Ntombini from KusasaRising Living Systems Organisation explained to the participants that it takes determination to venture into the humanitarian line of work.
“We are intentional about creating in roads for our community members at the various points of the value chain that we are creating with our permaculture-based products. We currently produce various permaculture-based products from our garden and from the abundantly available Umsutane herb.
Waste
During our three-day camp we offered various solutions that can be learnt by how we do permaculture. In permaculture we subscribe to zero waste and using what we have and the twelve principles of permaculture.
We made a dutch bucket watering system that allows for the watering of plants with very little maintenance required. We also learnt about soil preparations, planting and harvesting as well as seed banking, among other inventive ways to farm naturally while preserving and harvesting natural resources.
We learnt how to use nature to come up with contingencies that safeguard us from the effects of climate change and our changing landscapes,” he elaborated.
The third day of the camp was solely about processing the products that this project is initiating with its participating community members.
“We are making products that are made from our Umsutane essential oil that we have distilled from picking it from Makholokholo.
We are making a lotion, bar soap and wash for the mass market because of the immense benefits that this super herb has. It is great for skin inflammation such as acne and eczema. It also has other wellness benefits such as its benefits for the respiratory tract system.
We are also initiating food security products that range from chilli sauces to jams and also packaged indigenous legumes and nuts.
We are also producing cold edible oil and during our session we looked at how best to dry the peanut or peel the sunflower seed for cold oil pressing. We also made some natural juices with vegetables from the garden that included beetroot juice, carrot juice, celery juice, among other raw plant materials.” said Nontsikelelo Magongo from Mpuluzi community.
The community leadership has also expressed its elation about creating such an important opportunity for the youth, with them at the helm. Mr Gwebu, Chairman of the Mantabeni community, said “We are very grateful to KusasaRising Living Systems for initiating this project.
We are already doing a lot with our youth and we encourage them to be take charge of their own destiny. We are happy that you are giving our future generation something to do with their hands and minds.
What we are appreciating the most is that this is about allowing our youth to create their own opportunities within the value chain that KusasaRising is creating.
We have heard too many statistics about the high rate of youth unemployment and we have shifted our focus to assisting our youth to create sustainable projects and businesses instead of always waiting for some people to do it for them.”
Mr Mbuyisa, Secretary of the Lundzi community said, “The training is giving our youth permaculture practices to live by in their daily lives, while also enhancing their planting, growing and producing permaculture-based products while also going back to our natural farming ways.
We hope KusasaRising Living Systems Organisation will be assisted to reach its target of getting commercial sized machines to roll out this important project that is also an economic activity for our youth,” he concluded.
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