From Programming robots to planting food gardens

| 16 February 2016

South African non-profit organisation, Good Work Foundation (GWF), recently teamed up with Konica Minolta South Africa and Food & Trees for Africa (FTFA) to plant trees at South Africa’s newest learning campus: the Justicia Digital Learning Campus (JDLC).


Located on the border of the Kruger National Park and the Sabi Sand Private Game Reserve, JDLC is a futuristic hub of learning focusing its innovative education programmes on the languages of access: “digital” and “English”.


“This is possibly South Africa’s most rural digital campus,” explained GWF CEO, Kate Groch. “But while our team believes that in twenty years time children from this village will be programming robots, we also believe that the children of this village will need a much better understanding of sustainability, which is why we created the bizhub Conservation Academy with Konica Minolta South Africa .”


As part of their shared vision to get young rural South Africans excited about conservation, Konica Minolta South Africa and GWF, together with the team from FTFA hosted a tree planting at JDLC in January, planting a mix of 50 food and shade trees. The new JDLC team, accompanied by Jeminah Mkhize and Pat Anderson of FTFA, planted sausage trees among the existing marulas and added a mango orchard to the campus.


The planting is one part of a number of conservation initiatives driven by Konica Minolta South Africa and GWF, which include digital conservation literacy, fieldtrips into the Kruger National Park and an adult wildlife monitoring short course.