Bloekombos school gets a lesson in harvesting rain

A non-profit organisation is helping a Bloekombos school harvest rainwater for its vegetable gardens.

Save Our Schools Non Profit Organisation (SOS NPO) launched its “water in the sky” project at Bloekombos Secondary School on Wednesday March 22, which also happened to be World Water Day.

The organisation, which helps poor communities and schools, designed four vegetable gardens during the launch, which was attended by teachers, pupils and sponsors.

The project will see two rainwater harvesting masts installed, along with pumps and pipes, to feed precipitation into seven storage tanks that SOS NPO has already installed at the school.

“The rainwater harvesting masts will be constructed and tested over the next three months,” said SOS NPO spokeswoman Amy Burrows.

The organisation’s CEO, Shelley Humphreys, said more vegetable gardens - both horizontal and vertical ones - would be established at the school.

Solar-powered lights on the masts would be triggered whenever somebody approached to prevent theft, Ms Humphreys said.

Twenty of the school’s Grade 10s will be trained to tend the gardens and harvest the produce.

Siyabulela Sulelo, a teacher at the school, said the project could be of great benefit to the community.

“There is nowhere in the course of the year that the food is not needed. If we start with projects like these and expand to make it large, that would be a great relief to the poverty that we live in.”