Growing food security

Two key pillars of Lloyd’s charitable giving strategy are resilience and sustainability, and we have a long history of supporting communities globally to improve local infrastructure and develop skills to help communities thrive.

This is particularly true of our work with Rise Against Hunger (RAH), where we focus on the resilience element of our strategy with our support for the organisation’s initiatives to end hunger. From the implementation of sustainable community development projects to meal packaging programmes that harness the passion of local volunteers, Rise Against Hunger strives to make an impact on hunger by building resilience, self-sufficiency and empowerment in communities worldwide.

The Lloyd’s team in South Africa has been working with Rise Against Hunger Africa in supporting a sustainable farming project in Diepsloot township in Gauteng Province. The Lloyd’s funded Diepsloot Foundation (TDF), Rise Against Hunger (Africa) Vegetable Garden project has focused on establishing nursery tunnels, training and development of vertical gardens, and innovative approaches to water use to make food production more sustainable and cost-effective. 

The project is also helping to support Rise Against Hunger’s Women Empowerment project. The organisation, in keeping with the World Food Programme and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality, believes that empowering women and girls all over the world is a key part of breaking the cycle of poverty and ultimately ending hunger for good. 

Since the TDF project began, the main nursery tunnel has been expanded to incorporate an additional four beds, and a second tunnel has been built, adding a further 12 beds. The new tunnel is intended to bolster the organisation’s Woman Empowerment project plans, as well as being used for the training and development of vertical gardens. Diepsloot has also seen the introduction of drip irrigation solutions and more effective ’water-return systems’ for certain crops to capture excess water and offset recent unexpected increases in water charges. The installation of a separate water meter also allows the project team to measure water costs directly related to the Lloyd’s-backed initiative. The initiative in Diepsloot has reached full production and produce grown by the project is supporting around 400 children at 11 Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDs) in the area, which Rise Against Hunger Africa supports as part of its ECD Connect programme.

Excess seedlings from the project are distributed to ECDs and other community projects to assist them in starting their own micro-gardens. Indeed, the nursery has been so successful, with the ability to harvest and distribute fresh vegetables weekly, that it is also able to support two other initiatives in the province. TDF is also planning to start selling some of the produce from the project to generate income that will help the make it more sustainable over the longer term. Lloyd’s colleagues who visited the project were able to experience first-hand the full impact of the project and its ability to change the lives of so many people through improving their daily nutrition.