Permaculture in the City with Ron Berezan

Keiskamma Canada Foundation
presents
“Permaculture in the City”
Emerging Visions for Urban Agriculture

Thursday, May 7th
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Bonnie Doon Hall
9240 – 93 st, Edmonton

From backyards, to rooftops, to community gardens, why is growing food in the city becoming increasingly common around the world?

Spend an evening with Ron Berezan, “The Urban Farmer”, and explore the many benefits and models of growing food in urban areas, drawing on international and local examples. Engage in hands-on activities and learn about permaculture techniques for producing an abundant and organic harvest in an urban setting - including the wide range of edible species that grow in the Edmonton area.

The cost is $40.

A portion of the workshop fees will go to Keiskamma Canada Foundation.

To register call Sarah at 780-988-2976, or Wendy at 780-453-8029.
You can also register by sending an email to sarahcashmore@yahoo.ca

An Urgent Request - A Letter from the Directors of The Keiskamma Trust

Dear Canadian Friends,

I am writing on behalf of the Keiskamma Trust to appeal for your help.
We are currently experiencing an extreme lack of funds. This has happened for several reasons: one is the lack of fund-raising done earlier last year, another is the long waiting time that often occurs between submission of proposals and response from donors. We have a number of large proposals that were written to support the health project but we continue to wait for project visits and responses from funders and at present we have only enough funds to run for one month’s time.

Instead we have worked hard at producing a budget that will enable us to continue to respond, albeit on a smaller level, to the AIDS crisis in our area, and save enough funds to ensure that we can continue doing so for another three months. Today we have signed contracts with all of our health staff for one month only at reduced salaries. We are cutting down on food for patients and food parcels while the demand for these remains very high. We are also cutting our petrol costs and reducing our drivers to less hours which means we will leave some patients without transportation to hospital and clinic appointments.

For all of us at the Trust it is a very difficult time as we see patients begin to suffer and we contemplate a time in the near future when we will be left unable to respond at all.

We also have to make changes in our art project and yesterday we held a general meeting for the art project embroiderers and told them as well that we will have to cut down on the amount of piece-work we can give them and that some of them will have to be laid-off. Many of these women are the only wage-earners in their families and though they make small amounts of money each month it is sometimes the difference between eating or sending a child to school or not.

At the same time we have been confirmed in our project’s worth as the South African Health Department has just released new guidelines urging the care and immediate treatment of children who are HIV positive, severely ill people and everyone with low CD4 counts—a major victory for the fight against AIDS—and a vindication of what our project has fought for and done in this area for nearly a decade before the government came onboard. Please find attached the document released last week by the government. Thanks to a new minister of health—Barbara Hogan—and to the tireless efforts of NGOs like ours we are finally changing attitudes about the urgency of treating people with HIV/AIDS.

Attitudes are at last changing but treatment and access to treatment is still far behind. We need to continue our work at the frontlines of the AIDS crisis that will be with us for a generation to come and we need your help. We have proven our success in the face of tremendous odds for years, and we need to keep working to advocate on behalf of poor rural communities like ours. We have changed the face of the pandemic in our area: for example the Keiskamma Trust in conjunction with Dr Baker and Prof. Hofmeyr have brought the level of prevention of mother-to-child transmission up to be one of the highest in the country: over 90 percent of pregnant women in our district are getting treatment, which means their children are born without HIV. We have had several scholars and researchers who have visited us in the past few months and we have been confirmed that we are a model of care for rural under-resourced villages in South Africa.

It costs between 50 and 60 thousand Canadian dollars to run our programs each month. We have made large cuts and put on hold on any new initiatives and all of our managers have cut their own salaries in an effort to keep the project going until we hear back from major proposals that we have pending.

In the meantime we appeal for your urgent help. If you would consider making a donation to the Keiskamma Canada Foundation which supports the work of the Keiskamma Trust we would be grateful. Keiskamma Canada has been running for nearly a year and has a dedicated board of directors and is in the process of receiving registered charity status—which may still take several months to secure.

Donations can be made by using the PayPal DONATE button to the right, or cheques can be mailed to the following address and marked Emergency Funds.

Keiskamma Canada Foundation
14027-106 Avenue
Edmonton Alberta
T5N 1B3

On behalf of the Keiskamma Trust

Carol Hofmeyr and Annette Woudstra

directors, Keiskamma Trust