Football Foundation Of South Africa
Charity in Gans Bay

Our objectives are to support and initiate grassroots sports development in South Africa by means of empowering individuals through providing access to education, resources, facilities and equipment. Recognizing the need for social and sports development in South Africa.

Historically, all Siyakhula initiatives were run from the Siyakhula Organic Farm, situated at the heart of the Grootbos Nature Reserve. This farm, established in 2009, provided skills development in organic agriculture, sustainable animal husbandry and beekeeping to members from the local community, particularly women. This project provides skills training workshops to empower an estimated 1783 young people per year to become more employable, self-confident and positive about life. It uses sport as the vehicle to reach those who have little access to skills development opportunities and resources. A select group of budding young entrepreneurs from the project go on to complete a business development programme focused on small enterprises and entrepreneurship. This programme strives to significantly improve students’ lives in areas such as personal agency, communication, teamwork, financial literacy and employment skills and hopes to strengthen their sense of citizenship. Our Siyakhula candle making initiative is an exciting new project which encourages sustainability and enterprise development while simultaneously targeting waste management. After noticing how much candle wax was being disposed of by Grootbos’ Forest and Garden Lodges each day, the Siyakhula programme, in conjunction with the Green Futures team decided that this presented the perfect opportunity to develop a sustainable project benefiting both the reserve and our Foundation. Honey production began at the Growing the Future Organic Farm in 2009 as part of our agriculture and animal husbandry programme. We never bring any bees onto our reserve from outside sources. We produce both regular fynbos honey (all year around) as well as single blossom honey (only during the Erica flowering season). The honey is harvested at the time when these Ericas are in bloom. Grootbos Honey has a wonderful, rich quality and is more bitter than regular fynbos honey (a bit like dark chocolate vs milk chocolate). The honey is 100% organic (because there are no chemicals or pesticides on our farm or on the reserve), raw and unfiltered. We have a resident bee-keeper, and during 2016 began training an additional bee-keeper. skincare, bath products) containing our honey and beeswax. The Gansbaai Community Farm aims to improve food security (currently the surrounding areas experience 75% food insecurity (2013)) and dietary variety in the greater Gansbaai community by serving as an agricultural support hub. It serves as a training space for community members teaching the basics of food production with the aim of self-sustainability and as a support on a path to sustainable livelihoods. The basics of soil improvement techniques, composting, plant care, propagation, harvesting and sustainable agriculture practices are all included in the initial training phase. The second phase is where the graduates are allocated allotments, putting into practice the principles they have learnt. Over and above food production, the hope is to support the link between growing food and selling produce and ultimately value added products. The hope is through this project to create solutions for community members to generate income and as mentioned, work towards a point of sustainable livelihoods. Already some participants are selling surplus produce into the community from their allotments. Water is pumped through a limestone acquifer borehole and gravity fed to the bottling plant, where various sizes of still and sparkling water products are bottled for the Grootbos lodges. The water bottling is a key conservation initiative contributing to the Grootbos lodges sustainability and eco destination credentials.