From a small vegetable patch to a self-sustaining business, Anna Kgaretswe is making a living out of her garden in Majakaneng. Through her participation in SocioTech’s Broad-Based Livelihoods (BBL) strategies to stimulate personal economic activity, Anna has acquired agricultural skills and applies this knowledge to create a successful food gardening business.

Edith is part of SocioTech’s Broad-Based Livelihoods (BBL) strategies programme which seeks to stimulate personal economic activity. The BBL starts by enabling people living in poverty to address their most basic need for food and then empowers them with the skills to become economically independent, small business owners.

There are plenty of places that have neither fallen prey to the mall masquerading-as-market phenomenon nor yet been bothered by the attention of Instagram’s epicurean elite. The Rivonia market in Khutsong, Carltonville is (almost) one such spot. Many of the trader-farmers selling here have added to their pre-existing horticultural skills with training in organic cultivation and pest management through community upliftment enterprise, SocioTech.

Social grants are most effective when used to empower the disadvantaged to become agents of change in their own lives. Here is how SocioTech, a Pretoria-based social enterprise, is transforming lives through food gardening and entrepreneurial training.