00:00Our lives began to change through a plastic bottle.
00:11How did a chance encounter with an artist on this beach 24 years ago change Yandiswa
00:17Mizwana's life forever?
00:22Yandiswa lives in Maspumelele, about 40 kilometres outside Cape Town.
00:27She left her grandparents' village at the age of 19, hoping to study, but she ended
00:31up cleaning beaches.
00:33That job was about to come to an end when she met Monique Fagan.
00:38And then we said, oh, by the way, we are looking for jobs.
00:43And then we don't know what we are going to do because we're collecting litter and we're
00:46not getting any experience to find other jobs.
00:51The colourful plastic she was dumping at the landfill site intrigued her.
00:55She couldn't quite figure out what to make with it, but artist Monique Fagan had a plan.
01:03She came with a big pile of rubbish and then said, guys, let's have a workshop.
01:07Then it started then.
01:08She said, OK, guys, we'll make a circle and then we'll just think of our background.
01:16Closing her eyes and thinking of her childhood herding cattle with her grandfather.
01:20She made a cow, others made screens and mats, but she still wasn't convinced.
01:26How do you even pick up something dirty and wanting to exchange it for money?
01:34Excited by what they had produced, the artist took them to a tourist shop in central Cape Town.
01:40It was just a moment of feeling we were going to embarrass ourselves because the shop was
01:44so beautiful.
01:45And then we took a big screen caption.
01:47We hide our faces behind the little piece of a plank so that people, they don't see
01:52our eyes if this is really ugly, but I tell you, people were like so excited.
01:57They were like, this is so beautiful.
01:59This is so nice.
02:01We are not crazy anymore.
02:03They are the craziest because they throw the rubbish and then they're buying back it back
02:08from us.
02:09They left the shop that day with a large order and never looked back.
02:18How did this humble workshop turn them into an international success?
02:24We went to Design in Daba, which is a big international event and we were very busy.
02:30We had so many orders, created opportunity for me to be invited to Australia 2006, the
02:35Sydney Trade Fair 2007, the Melbourne one.
02:392009, I went to Paris, I visited Matara.
02:42Our lives started to be on a level whereby we were able to send our children to private
02:48schools.
02:49An Australian donor donated this double story house to Yandiswa.
02:56So what I decided to do was to do a symbol or evidence of how much do I appreciate the
03:03universe for providing me with plastic bottle to change my life.
03:08So I decided to share my house with women who are still looking for jobs and having
03:13babies so that we can look after their babies.
03:19How did making art from recycled plastic expand to growing gardens and running a nutrition
03:24program?
03:25During COVID, what I've noticed mostly is that our young people, they don't have what
03:32I can call our natural skills that were given to us by our grandmothers at home.
03:37And our community members here are struggling a lot in terms of food.
03:43So she opened eight community kitchens and established a garden program with ten young
03:48men like Vuyisani Mabubengwan.
03:52The garden champions are turning every possible pocket of the land into a vegetable garden.
03:58They were telling me that a size of a tall garden can feed the whole family.
04:04But I didn't believe that.
04:05I thought that, yeah, no, it's not possible until I experienced it.
04:12So far, they've established over a hundred gardens, aiming for 200 by the end of the
04:16year.
04:17Mass creative hub and Mama Yandi changed my life a lot.
04:24Since I have a salary that I'm getting, I can manage to do my needs and helping the
04:30people around the community.
04:32It doesn't end here in our big sites.
04:36We move around the gardens.
04:42After COVID, Yanduso formalized her work, establishing Massy Creative Hub, a non-profit
04:48organization.
04:51A space for young people in Massy to acquire a better level of self-confidence and also
04:59gain skills in order to better their own community and also create easy access to
05:06a healthy plate or healthy food.
05:08So it's a child of Massy bettering the person and the community or the streets of Massy.
05:16Ten young ambassadors run an after-school and nutrition program.
05:26Yanduso's daughter, Luando Siboninge, assists with the Nourish Child Program, educating
05:30children about healthy food choices run in conjunction with a local university.
05:37This changed my life.
05:38Places that I go to, like to the training in Joburg, Serete, to Stellenbosch University,
05:45my family can recognize me now.
05:48Yanduso's drive and love of art has transformed so many lives in her community.
05:55That makes me want to wake up early in the morning and go do more.
06:00For me, I'm so grateful for the beach environment, for the plastic bottles, to change my life.
