With the help of women from the Bryanston Catholic Church Commission for Justice and Peace, in the Archdiocese of Johannesburg, Ms. Moloantoa has received six water tanks for Mmakau villagers.
“The first tank was a donation from the Bryanston Catholic Church. Today we have managed to get six tanks”, said Ms. Moloantoa in the July 25 interview, and added, “With the availability of water, people are encouraged to grow their own vegetable gardens.”
The retired South African nurse and former secretary of the health and educational department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) said, “Such developments are encouraging” and that together with her team from Bryanston Catholic Church, they hope to “inspire more people to support the initiative”.
Ms. Moloantoa noted that due to the rising levels of food insecurity in the community, the project has “deemed it fit to extend the footprint of its operations to food security.”
She continued, “We have started several home-based vegetable gardening projects with several community members. We supply the community members with vegetable seeds for them to plant and grow vegetables at home in their own home-based vegetable gardens.”
“The results have been outstanding thus far. The community members and their families are now able to harvest vegetables from their home-based gardens and thus ensure food security for their homes and families. We plan to extend the project on a much wider scale”, Ms. Moloantoa told ACI Africa July 25.
She emphasized that the success of the rainwater harvesting project would “ensure that each home, school and business is equipped with a rainwater harvesting system for consistent water supply all year round.”
In a separate interview, Judy Stockhill, a member of the Bryanston Catholic Church Commission for Justice and Peace, told ACI Africa that the commission has been using Pope Francis' Encyclical Letter on care for our common home, Laudato Sí', to extend help to people experiencing environmental challenges including water scarcity.
“In our parish we have the Justice and Peace ‘Greening the Parish’ project to make the parish more sustainable. We harvest rainwater, which is used for our irrigation system”, Ms. Stockhill said during the July 25 interview.
She added, “Part of the sustainability project that we have at the Church of the Resurrection in Bryanston, is to demonstrate to the Parish and the wider community that it is possible to save water through rainwater harvesting."
