Mikal Lambert

Hi, what to say...
i'm a community worker who uses small scale organic food gardening as a tool for social transformation. using abcd as an approach to dealing with people & communities with a focus on existing assets, like those gardeners already growing food and then we support them to flourish, knowing that the greatest influences in a rural community are the community members individually & collectively.
in 2010, with a group of friends, we started an ngo enviro solutions centre. our symbol was a leaf symbolic for natural life & a pair of hands symbolic for action in the world & everyone has 2 hands so we can do something. we were very action oriented! we wanted to get it done! now! for 7 years we set up gardens at orphanages, old age homes, community centres and schools around johannesburg, without raising any any money. i worked as a waiter at a high end restaurant which allowed me the freedom to do community engagements in the day & earn a living at night. during this time i learnt how to mobilize people to support community interventions. this was before facebook so i was posting random ads all over inviting people to bring some tools, a bag of seeds or a tray of seedlings and help us start a garden. it was amazing to see how many people just showed up. we even got a volunteer from germany to make some videos about those days. but it was this time that taught me that we can make great progress with just the resources & relationships we have.
that was more than 15 years ago, but still we focusing on existing assets and how to build better relationships to help create the world we want.