The existence of Ukuvuna-Urban Farming is premised on the paradigm of permaculture. The Wiktionary defines permaculture as any system of sustainable agriculture that renews natural resources and enriches local ecosystems; The design, installation and maintenance of indefinitely sustainable human communities set in balanced ecologies, both urban and rural.
Ukuvunu-Urban Farming is an internationally recognized permaculture enterprise founded in response to the demand of communities on land use management. We design and implement projects that adapt and mitigated climate change. Our projects focuses on establishing sustainable livelihoods in Africa.
Our mission is to facilitate the establishment of self-managed permaculture nodes in Africa by capacity building local people and developing and entrepreneurial skills.
Ukuvuna is a Zulu word meaning “abundant harvest”. We adopted this name to highlight the result-driven objectives of our business and to affirm that our involvement with any organization or learning institute as an investment that will most certainly yield fruit in due time.
Ukuvuna is a spontaneous, grassroots’ movement that is continually evolving to promote sustainable development in Africa for those who are most in need both in rural and urban settlement.
Urban Farming is the same as Urban Agriculture. Defined by Wikipedia dictionary, “Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city.” Urban farming contributes to food and nutrition security by increasing the diversity of food variety and availability of food to people living in cities. Our Urban farming project involves two main programs:
The farm which is in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, has offers 1day to 5day permaculture training. The farm has established rain water harvesting and management system, grey and black water treatment, agronomy, plant propagation, herbs and medicinal plants, seed saving, renewable energy and management, earthworm farming, African crafts, horticulture, agroforestry, apiculture, aquaculture, small livestock sheep, goats, poultry – chickens, geese, turkeys, rabbits and ducks
We provide outreach training in a variety of sustainable practices, a unique monitoring and evaluation system, and access to an international network of sustainable demonstration sites, including our own permaculture demonstration site in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. We help find appropriate synergy between indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) with the modern technology. We also help facilitate the establishment of formal and legal structures within the household units such as family trust (FT) and community based organisation (CBO).
We can also provide services as: Consultancy to identify and implement projects in your operating areas
Trainers and educators to get the community working on a gardening project
Manager to ensure that gardens are productive and maintained to cater for the present and the future
'Match-maker' between you and communities
Provider of educational material on nutrition, gardening, HIV/AIDS and climate change
