What if between changing the diapers, the laundry and the dishes a community of mothers around the world could change the future for a community of kids and their mamas, grandmas and aunties in South Africa?

What if 1 blog community could build 1 South African community a safe place for sustainable food, child care, economic empowerment, job skills trainings, a gathering place for church, classrooms for HIV/Aids education, and a playground for their kids?

This is the human blue print:



The goal is to raise $150,000 to fund the entire project between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day – because love is more than a date on the calendar, and it never leaves anyone out. And Mother's Day is a 365 days a year adventure, always worth celebrating.

{Click here to read the full back story about this project.}

Phase 1: Community Vegetable Garden FULLY FUNDED

Phase 2: Community Kitchen and Welcome Center $40,000 FULLY FUNDED

Phase 3: Community Outreach Hall

Phase 4: 12 Classrooms

Phase 5: Playground

This is Phase 1 - A Community Vegetable Garden

Because what if 1 blog community could give 1 South African community food security and a source of income?

Help One Now and local South African organizations,  Take Action and the James 1:27 Trust partnered with you to build a community water point last fall.

That water point is now ready to sustain a community vegetable garden.

A community just north of Pretoria, South Africa, called Maubane. Home to about 150 adults and 250 orphans and vulnerable children.

Foundations for Farming will be training community representatives in "train the trainer" workshops and helping them establish a 2,500 square metre garden.

This garden will produce spinach, beans, tomatoes, carrots, corn and soya. Enough to feed the community as well as be a source of sales income.

This garden project is designed with the specifics of South African soil and this community in mind. 

• Training, equipment, veggies = $2,500
• Fencing to keep out cattle = $1,000
• Irrigation equipment = $1,500 

With your help and God's provision our hope is a community garden that will go from looking like this...

...to looking like one of these that have been developed and grown through the trainings of the Foundations for Farming team:

The knowledge and the equipment to transform a barren plot of land into a fertile, profitable, self sustaining source of food?

It's a game changer.

So next time that you're in the veggie aisle at the grocery store, remember that moms do brave things. Including feeding their kids the vegetables! No matter where in the world they are.

Won't you be brave with us and donate the cost of a box of tomatoes, the cost of a bag of carrots or the cost of a whole row of corn?

And then invite your family, your kids, your friends to join our virtual veggie garden  --

Here are a few tweets to choose from or use to update Facebook:

Love is more than a date on the calendar. Fall in love with the world next door. #SurprisedByMotherhood →  click to tweet

Love is about giving, not receiving. Give a garden & change a child's life. #SurprisedByMotherhood →  click to tweet

There is NOTHING ORDINARY about being a mom, especially to hundreds of kids who don't have one. #SurprisedByMotherhood. →  click to tweet

Because sometimes you change the world, one carrot, one corn cob, one kid at a time. #SurprisedByMotherhood → click to tweet

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Phase 1: Community Vegetable Garden

Phase 2: Community Kitchen and Welcome Center

Phase 3: Community Outreach Hall

Phase 4: 12 Classrooms

Phase 5: Playground

(in)courage Blog and Help One Now

This project is being championed by the (in)courage Giv(in)g initiative. Because no matter what the zip code, God calls us all family. So we're in this together. All the way. And honored to share and support these stories with our global community of women at www.incourage.me

All photos by Patrick Black, Yorke Rodda and Foundations for Farming.