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The Naked Difference: The Family Food Garden project sparks entrepreneurship

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The Greenpop Foundation and Christel House SA joined forces to help parents sustainably grow their own food at home.

The Family Food Garden project is among the initiatives that have received support from the Naked Difference.

In the beginning of 2022, Christel House SA took part in Greenpop’s Family Food Garden project in line with its objective of supporting the parents of students enrolled at the non-profit school. The school, based in Cape Town, serves more than 1,000 students from severely impoverished communities in the Cape Flats. They help them finish school and qualify for a tertiary education while also helping the children realise their goals, dreams and human potential.

The aim of the Family Food Garden project was to equip parents with the skills to sustainably grow their own food at home via a 12-month-long digital food gardening course. At the kickoff event at Christel House, 20 parents received a Family Garden Pod – a compact, self-contained vegetable gardening system that included a composting worm farm and a vegetable garden. From there they had access to coaching via WhatsApp along with other resources to help them over the 12-month period.

“We are excited that 20 parents from our school will have the opportunity to learn micro-farming skills that will enable them to sustainably grow their own food at home and improve their livelihoods. We’re also grateful to the Naked Difference for providing further funds that we are using to address needs such as prescription reading glasses, student excursions and drama therapy to promote mental health for our students, as well as workshops to empower Christel House parents”
– Adri Marais, CEO at Christel House SA

One year down the line, the impact of the Family Food Garden project has been great. Parents have gained knowledge about gardening, cooking, nutrition, and entrepreneurship. Many of them have even started selling their produce.

One parent who took part in the project said, "The knowledge I have gained is how to grow veggies -- enough to feed my family and feed the less fortunate. It is my aim to start a feeding scheme to feed the less fortunate and I am so happy I was afforded this opportunity to learn how to grow my own vegetables."

The Family Food Garden project is a shining example of how community-driven initiatives can make a real impact in people's lives. We're excited to see what Christel House SA and Greenpop do in the future. Knowing them, they will incorporate learnings from this initiative into their future ones – continuing to optimise and maximise their impacts.

We’re proud that the Naked Difference can make initiatives like this possible and it’s all thanks to our customers.

The Naked Difference is a direct impact of Naked’s business model and it allows us and our customers to make a difference in communities.

Each year, rather than taking unclaimed money as extra profit, we give it to causes that our customers choose. So far we’ve donated R1.7-million.

How the Naked Difference aligns our interests with those of our customers

The way that the traditional insurance business model works is that if less money is paid out in claims, there will be more profit for the insurer – so you and your insurer are constantly fighting over the same money.

Naked doesn’t work like that. Instead, we take a flat fee from your premiums – that fee covers our expenses as well as profit. The rest of the premium is pooled in a “pot” and we use that to pay claims. If there is money left over in that pot, it doesn’t go into our back pocket. It gets paid to causes that you choose to support through the Naked Difference.

This means that we’ve removed the link between our profit and the amount paid out in claims. Rather, our profit is dependent on getting people to join Naked and keeping them happy on our platform – just like any other tech company.

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