Collaboration with the Savory Institute
Current
"Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil."
Allan Savory
OLIVE LEAF Foundation (OLF) is a South African based Sustainable Development Organisation with 30 years’ experience helping disadvantaged communities in Africa.
From humble beginnings in 1989, OLF grew in response to the emerging HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, providing community sensitive programmes locally and in 37 countries on the continent. This work developed a foundation of strong community mobilisation, good governance and sustainability.
OLF adapted and evolved, and the last decade saw a shift in focus from urban-based programmes to rural regenerative initiatives, addressing the global climate change crisis by mobilising communities to better manage the natural resources (land and livestock) at their disposal.
Our quest to find a lasting and viable solution to land degradation and poverty in the communal farming areas of South Africa, led us to the Savory Institute: an international organisation committed to restoring the soils and grasslands of the world through Holistic Management. Based on the work of Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean scientist, Holistic Management is a systems thinking approach to managing resources, resulting in restored grasslands. Healthy grasslands have a number of positive outcomes: food security, carbon sequestration, drought resilience, water infiltration and economic viability.
The dynamic collaboration between Olive Leaf Foundation and the Savory Institute saw the creation of the Savory Hub South Africa, based on a farm near Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. And in 2014 work began in the Hewu District, a communal farming region in the Ciskei – a former ‘homeland’ under Apartheid.