Communitarian Work in SOS Children Village

The communitarian work takes place in S.O.S Children’s Villages of South Africa. It is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) located in Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg. This organization is focused on helping orphan children or kids who are vulnerable, abused or not safe. The SOS Children's Villages Association of South Africa is a member of SOS - Kinderdorf International, the largest private welfare organization for children in the world. The NGO receives most of its financial support from European organizations.

The NGO is focused on three areas:

-Family Basic Care (FBC): it consists of the wellbeing of the children inside the villages. The organization also has houses outside the villages under its care. For both the aims are to provide food, take care of, help to build relationships between children and create a family environment.
-Family Strengthening Program (FSP): This sort of program is focused on how the NGO can help the community. It is the contribution of the NGO to the neighbourhood. They established an office in the France community called “The White house” to provide orientation about HIV, nutrition, vegetables gardens and other topics that are required. As I mentioned before, part of the vegetable yield is sold, at low cost, to this community.

-Kinder garden (KG): This is basic education for the little children consisting of 6 classrooms, qualified teachers and didactic material.

I’m going to be working in three areas. I just finished working in the FSP. In this program I worked with a group of ladies interested in learning entrepreneurial skills. The selection and conformation of the group was in charge of Nonhlanha. This lady is one of the managers of FSP. My aim was show this group the importance of work in their own business with feeling and love. I teach about the benefits that bring you if you know how to do price, promotion, place and product.

After three meetings I felt satisfied, because all the ladies were very grateful of me, also they told me about how much they learned. I was incredible, I felt extremely good. At the end of the session they showed me how to dance a typical Zulu dance. Thank you to all the ladies for support me and Nonhlanha to let me do this activity.

The next week I will be working in other area, this time is going to be with children!!!

Week 9

This week I’m focusing on my project at the Permaculture Section of Ukulinga. After I visited the place, I started looking for the people involved in the project. It is not easy when the University is so big. Finally I got to the right people and this moment I got clear understanding of what the research about and the intentions for built. At the end of the project I hope for the place to be used for further research.

Week 8

In this week I received the invitation of the Deputy Manager ofSouth Region of the KZN Agriculture and Environment Affairs Johannes F. Villiers to attend the Annual Research Symposium. I really appreciate the performance of prominent staff in the areas such as natural resources management, soils fertility, crops and livestock production.

The aim of this congress is to expose the last projects in research developed in different parts of KZN with the approach to improve agricultural techniques toward sustainability and improvement of rural areas.

The Symposium started with a realistic and motivated speech about the current position of South Africa in agriculture in the world, the influence of global warming on environment, the urgent necessity to adapt to environmentally friendly methods in agriculture and livestock production.

The presentations were focused on the following topics: planting without ploughing, cover cropping, control diseases, evaluation of varieties of potato cultivator, the potential of cheery research, the contribution of homestead gardens to household’s food security and others.
It was very interesting to be part of this Symposium. It contributed a vision for my research projects assignment. Besides it was a great experience share time with professional people in the agricultural fields.

Besides this Symposium I went for final year student presentations at the Animal and Poultry Science Department. From my point of view the most interesting project was a survey of obesity in dogs, so the student spoke about the source of food and how the human feelings affects the diet of the animal.

I attended one fieldtrip with a group of animal reproduction. We went to place completely dedicated to raise horses for racing. We also saw the veterinarian checking all the females to determinate their fertility status. Also we saw the through the screen of the ultrasound the developing horse foetus. At the end of the fieldtrip we witnessed the mating process.

I was invited for Ms Masefo Mokoma lecture in Bio resources to give a small presentation about Costa Rica and EARTH University. It was in a big classroom, about 40 students. Fortunately everybody could understand me and enjoyed the presentation.

I met the student Nokubonga Mweli who wants to further her studies at EARTH University from next year. She is 17 years old, with a very big enthusiasm for learning and living in Costa Rica. She is planning to leave South Africa at the beginning of December to start a new life in Costa Rica. I wish her the best! She must keep practicing her Spanish! Nos vemos en la U!

Week 7

Visit to the Non Governmental Organization CAP (Church of Agriculture Program)

The visit took place in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal province. It is an NGO dedicated to improve the agriculture practices to insure food security in families. Basically, they are subsistant farmers. The NGO has small staff but each one has designed functions.

In the visit I had the opportunity to be part of a Zulu family. It was an extraordinary experience. I slept in a roundhouse, ate phuthu, learnt Zulu and shared their life style. Electricity service is not available in all the community and there is a shortage of water. From my point of view it is interesting how they organize their lives.

I appreciated the contribution of a German consulter. He came five years ago to see the farmer’s situation especially in animal production. He researched the Unguni beef cattle for production and found that these animals are more resistant to long periods of hunger; tick bone diseases and are good producers of milk and meet.

Owing to the fact that the consulter is in Msinga, the NGO organized different farmer’s days to share knowledge on common problems in cattle, chicken and goats production. Also, the farmers talk about the good practices. It is a excellent way to stimulate the learning.

The first farmer’s day was for chicken raisers. On this day a visitor from a Belgium foundation joined to see the NGO’s work and interaction with the producers. At the beginning the farmer show the feed given to the chicks. It was a mixture between old phutho, eggs and yellow maize. He spoke about his experience and the benefits of his cheap source of feed.

Common problems the chicken raisers face is the control of dogs and goats and other animals that eat the eggs and chicks. For that reason they made special nest for the hens and they put in the trees. Furthermore, the price of the yellow maize is high and in some places the cultivation of this crop is not possible for the lack of water.

The second day was dedicated to cattle farmers. The principal problem is acces of pasture, is a very dry zone and the winter in long. They need to identify a way to preserve pasture for winter or use source of feed. Water shortage is also a trouble. Ticks cause problems because they transmit diseases.

The third day was dedicated to meet the chicken raisers in a different area. This meeting was quite similar to the last, but this day the NGO provided the farmers with vaccinations for the chickens. The vaccination is sold far away from the community, so the NGO supplies the product.

Furthermore, I had the opportunity to attend one meeting with all the staff and see how they organize the activities; resolve the problems and, logistic aspects. They use colours to separate the good and the bad things during the farmer’s day. Each person has to write two good and bad aspects that occurred during the day. Everybody is encouraged to comment.
All in all, it was an incredible experience that helped make me a better person. Understanding how they live contributed to my personal plus professional development. After the days in Msinga, the concept of rural areas in South Africa is clear, also motivates me to learn more about extension agriculture. Thank you Ms Gugulethu Mbatha and the entire CAP staff for letting me live this experience! See you in Lesotho on December 1st !!!

Week 6

Visit of the Camperdown Mkhambathini local projects Municipality
I had the opportunity to visit different projects that promote income for families of the municipality. The Municipality is working with an Integrated Develop Plan for the 2008 and 2009.

To identify the groups with the intentions of starting a business, the Municipality works with leadership from the community. Community leaders are in charge of formalizing the groups, giving support when needed it and are the direct contact with the Municipality.

The first project I visited was beadwork, a group of women dedicated to do necklaces, earrings, belts, bangles and all kind of accessories. They sit together to share ideas and experiences. I had the incredible opportunity to sit with them and starts begin making a belt. It was amazing to share the moment with the ladies. Not even the language was an inconvenience to learn as I so enjoyed the beadwork.

The Municipality through the Rural Development Office give support to the group. They help with transport to sell the beadwork and the obtaining the materials.
The second project I visited was a group of women dedicated to raise chickens. They buy the chicks at low cost and feed them until they have the adequate weight to sell them. The price is between 30-40 Rand ($3-$4). The Municipality provides the materials to build the place where the chickens stay.

In the future week I will have the opportunity to see the vegetable garden project.

Week 5

I attend the Animal Sciences lecture imparted for the professor Ignatius Nshali. The topic of the lecture was based on small ruminants like goats and sheep. The main idea was importance of the management at the moment of give birth in both animals. The classroom was occupied for 15 students of second year in this mayor.

I received an invitation for Zohra Sooliman for attend one monthly meeting with the consuls of the Careline. The CareLine is a free service offer for the NGO to people how need advices related with any kind of social problems such as: illnesses, depression, social relationships and others. The consuls work voluntary in the office. Ms Sooliman is the wife of the director of the NGO Gift of the Givers. She manages the social programs. Besides she explained me about the other activities of the NGO.

Furthermore, I had the opportunity to understand the basic principles to organize a food processing plant.

Week 4

Visit to Rainbow Chicken Farms

Image from website:http://www.rainbowchickens.co.za/about_company.aspx

This is one of the biggest chicken producers in South Africa. All the chains for chicken processing are managed in this enterprise. They have their farms located throughout the country.
The whole process begins with the keeping of the birds’ grandparents. In the place where they are kept there are also chicks that are imported. They are using only a pure genetic Cobb breed in their farms. After 22 weeks of age, birds are transferred to the laying house where they produce eggs for the next 38-40 weeks. Eggs are taken to the hatcheries where they are put onto setter trolleys just before they are sorted and graded. Hatching eggs are then set to the machines and allowed to hatch for a period of 21 days. Afterwards, in the growing farms, a special diet is provided with the proper installation put in place to obtain chickens ready in 38 days with a weight of 1, 8 kg.

In the processing plant, that is where chickens are slaughtered. They try by all means to apply animal welfare principles throughout the process. The house in which they slaughter chickens is well ventilated to provide a suitable environment for chickens to be calm just before they are slaughtered. They slaughter chickens with the use of an electric stunner and cut the head off after. On average, they slaughter about 200 000 chickens per day.
The Rainbow enterprise mostly sells fresh and frozen chicken meat products. They use quality machines to do functions like portion freezer, spin and air chillier; also for packing they use mechanical and manual material. Their target market includes supermarkets such as Spar, Pick ‘n Pay, and also provide chicken to the KFC restaurants.

Rainbow is an enterprise that has an important impact in South African society, mostly by providing job opportunities and quality and safe chicken meat and eggs required for human consumption. Besides, they give support to rural communities with founding education programs.

I had an opportunity to attend the Symposium entitled “Understanding Communal Animal Agriculture” which was conducted by Developing Animal Agriculture Interest Group joint of South African Society of Animal Science Stands (SASAS). The Symposium took place in Drakensburg.

In this conference I could appreciate the performance of professionals in areas such as agriculture, livestock management, agroforesty, animal sciences, developer researchers and NGO leaderships.

The aim of the symposium was to share ideas about how can a project be made successful in rural areas. Because the rural communities encounter several problems related with bad management of cattle, overgrazing, lack of agricultural awareness issues, low quality of soils, organization of community lands while on the other hand they have to carry on with the Zulu culture.

A number of important points in communal agreement were the necessity of strengthened the entrepreneurial skills like a motivation to keep the project running, establish a goal and at the end the community can work by their own account in a progressive way. In addition, they concord with the witness that the schools have, because the academic program do not include the entrepreneur motivation, build up of creativity and the fieldwork in vegetables school gardens are assigned like a punishment for bad behaviour. For that reason, the kids developed a dislike to agriculture and they do not learn in a proper way for them to be able to apply all the necessary information in the near future. The influence of HIV-Aids was one of the common points under a spotlight, because the influence that this epidemic has in agriculture is of great concern. This disease militates against food security and literacy in a community with high index of HIV.

Some research projects are implementing in the farms from rural areas with the endeavour of looking for solutions at the same time teach the farmers. For example, the project in Ladysmith from which I attended (see Week 3). Other kind of research is based on increasing the knowledge of the areas, for example see the grazing potential of the communal areas.
Another challenge is to try and understand the Zulu culture. Mostly in rural areas the people tend to be very strict about how to follow the customs. For instance, if a man is going to get married he must pay Lobola. The Lobola is then paid to the bride’s family; it is normally compensated with cattle. In addition, the Zulu’s believe mostly in the ancestors and for that reason they can surrender the entire domestic animals to attribute for them.

The role of woman in this society is also different, customs like Umemulo which is a ceremony that the family do to present to the community that the daughter is a women and they sacrifice cattle to the presentation. If the woman is married she can get into the Kraal (place where goats and other animals sleep), also any woman can go to the dipping tanks (place where animals are disinfected). Those customs tend to limit animal management and leads to the reduction of the heard.

The symposium concluded with the visit to a dairy farm. We could appreciate the conditions of the producer. He disposes of enough land to cultivate and maintain the herd. Also he received the dairy machines as a donation and has the infrastructure to use it. However, his herd appeared dead hungry. The farmer has one tractor, which is not working, for that reason he cannot plant maize. The pipe for transporting water to the dairy place was broken therefore the dairy work was then done manually. He used beans straws like feed, but he put it in the grass and lost the taste for the cows to eat.

The situation is controversial. How can the professionals help him if he does not show interest about these issues? The impression that came to me was that he was waiting for somebody to do things for him...

Also on the visit we could see an agroforestry project. It was a parcel with grass and trees and cultivated pastures using a simple plan of irrigation. The project is successful, the grass and the trees are growing very fine. But if a farmer wants to adapted he must spend money in the pump and the pasture and that is when he is going to be recompensed with the output but sometimes they do not take that as important and thus end up having nothing.

I also attended a Garden and Leisure Show. It took place in Pietermaritzburg in the Royal Agricultural Show Grounds. In there you could find a lot of different displays with nurseries of the zone, garden shops, restaurants and demonstrated stands like University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Most of the nurseries and displays are trying to promote the use of indigenous plants to stop the spread of alien plants, because they have an adverse impact in South African society. Indigenous plants like Pincushion, Proteias, Aloes, Everlasting, Strelitzia and Clivias are the frequent offers for gardening.

In the UKZN stand they displayed the mayors that the University offer related with biology and agriculture. Also in the display you could find information about the University and tips about how to do gardening properly.

Week 3

Ladysmith visit.

This field-trip was again with FSR. We visited 8 pig producers to do surveys about how they manage the pigs, family situation and other general questions. With this diagnostic study, the group can realize in which direction to do their research. Mostly of the producers bought the

piglets from the same raiser and have problems with the feed due to high feed cost. One possible topic for the research is to see the genetic characteristics of their pigs under ideal conditions at the Cedara research station to determine their biological performance and determine the best formulations for feeding rural pigs in Ladysmith.

Out of all the farmers visited they had a total +/- 200 pigs. These pigs are kept intensively in wooden houses or houses made of corrugated iron. Due to high feed prices, these farmers feed their pigs swill (waste and kitchen left overs) which is not good to diseases like foot and mouth being transferred through swill. Biodigestors can be of future use to these to produce energy as some of these farmers do not have any electricity to warm the piglets.

Week 2

I attended a fieldtrip to Willowton Oil and Cake Mills (WOCH) which is located in Pietermaritzburg. This factory uses the sunflower seed to extract the oil and they use the waste as sub product for animal food. They trait to use as much efficient as possible of all the oil they have. Firstly, they made a mechanical extraction and obtained about 70% of the oil then the cake (material from the first extraction) passed on another withdrawal with hexane as a solvent extraction. Because the cake still with 18-20% of oil approximately.

Image obtained form the webpage: http://www.wocm.com/products1.htm

They try to reduce the waste by using the hulk (the material that involves the center of the seed) like fuel, reusing the hexane solution and sell the cake meal as feed for animals. WOCH buy the sunflower seed based on the percentage of oil (38-40%), protein (38%) and water (10%). Besides they have their own laboratory for testing the quality of the seed and research in oil products. South Africa is one of the best world producers of sunflower seeds.
I had the opportunity to travel with the Department of Agricultural and Environment Affairs (DAEA) of Kwazulu-Natal with the (Farming Systems Research Section) to Bergville. They are working with the Agriculture Research Council (ARC) in a goat project. The project consists of testing the efficacy of Copper in fighting internal parasites especially roundworms. The copper is given once only to the animal due to poisonous nature of the copper when given in large amounts. At the same time, the farmer learns about the proper management of goats.

They started with the project at the beginning of the year. The group chose the participants based on their interest of learning about goats management. They selected 8 farmers. In each farm they select a representative number of goats for the research. They explained carefully the entire project and the activities that the farmers and the researchers have to do. Besides this project, the DAEA also provides books and Famacha card (visual test to determinate the anemia score)

The community is visited once a month. With each selected goat they take the weight, Famacha, body condition, fecal sample, number of kids and a blood sample. The rest of the animals only get the Famacha done on them. If the score is critical they are given medicine. Also, the dogs or any other animal that is in bad condition or sick, they are given medical attention.
Every tree months the group organizes a Farmer’s Day. With the intention of solve any doubts or problems from the farmers and also to give a feedback of the project results. They perform demonstrations of the management activities such as: Famacha, ways for handling and restraining the goat, the use of hoof shears. Also, the farmers interact between them and share the knowledge.

The trip to Escort was with the same Department. It was the first contact with this community. The place was very dry. The community is dispersed. The cattle and goats are communal. They have poor soil conditions. When we arrived the people was getting to the place too. The women sit in one side and the men on the other. Before the meeting start according to the Zulu culture it is necessary pray first. I made the prayer in Spanish because I was the foreigner. The meeting took like one hour. At the end, the conclusions are: the habitants of this

community have several problems for feed and management of goats and cattle, because they do not have the knowledge and have a few sources of food. The community is waiting for a redistribution of the land from commercial farms that are being given back to the original land owners. They are going to have an appropriate space to farming. When they receive the land they are going to have another meeting with the Department. In this trip I had the opotunity to see my first giraffe!!!