Football players from the University of Florida are helping the Rise Above Development’s (RAD) Youth Centre in Lavender Hill create a self-sustaining vegetable garden.
Also read: New RAD youth centre will educate and inspire in Lavender Hill
About 13 players aged between 18 and 22 are building 1.8m water tanks in partnership with Michigan-based non-profit, Flow, News24 reports.
Nawaal Weitz, SA director of Beyond Sports Tours, says that the company regularly partners with universities in the United States and hosts many groups such as the Florida Gators.
‘They come to SA for around seven days and they give back to the community. We also partner with local NGOs or a community for our universities to do whatever they need assistance with and in this case, it is to build water tanks. We come out and do service work to instil a greater sense of world community, to understand different cultures, different ways of life, different ways to give back and serve. We are a very privileged group and create a lot of leadership in our own communities, so if we can help spread that anywhere else in the world we would like to.’
Day 2️⃣ in Cape Town
Constructing water tanks for the Lavender Hill youth through ‘For The Love of Water’. ?#GatorMade | #GatorsInSouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/sLz005o4N5
— Florida Gators Football (@GatorsFB) May 9, 2023
‘The people of Cape Town have been extremely welcoming, and very knowledgeable. It is nice to work along and beside people who will benefit from the work that we are doing and our guys like children, so as the kids come home from school, our big kids become little kids again.’
RAD CEO Lindsay Cessford says building the water tanks is just the start of a broader plan. ‘We are building our first of three water tanks. So they are going to be the first of many. We are very much looking to make this centre sustainable, especially with everything that is happening with load shedding. We are looking to get solar panels as well for the actual buildings to keep this space very green and sustainable.’
In addition, the project got its first water well thanks to the Department of Agriculture. The overall aim is to create learning gardens and grow vegetables for a café that will provide meals for the children in the area.
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Picture: @GatorsFB / Twitter