The Co-op’s flagship programme, Tides of Care, establishes a permanent living classroom at the new Bordjiesrif Education and Research Hub within Table Mountain National Park, Cape Point, in formal partnership with SANParks. The programme integrates climate education, ecological restoration, wild food, coastal science, indigenous knowledge systems, youth leadership development, and creative practice. Rather than teaching climate change as an abstract concept, Tides of Care enables participants to experience environmental change through direct engagement with local ecosystems and collective action.

Tides of Care prioritises access for local schools, Black and Brown communities, and youth who have been historically excluded from coastlines and protected wild spaces — and for whom that exclusion has meant a disconnection from the ecological knowledge, heritage, and belonging that these landscapes hold. All curriculum, research, and resources generated during the initial two-year project will be released as open-source for educators across southern Africa and beyond. The programme also welcomes research student residencies from around the world, visiting scientists, musicians, artists, university students, school groups, elders and healers. This space is built for many kinds of knowing.

The Co-op operates across two connected classroom environments. At Good Hope Gardens Nursery, a land-based ecological classroom rooted in decades of indigenous horticultural knowledge, participants engage with foraging, medicinal and edible plant education, plant identification, food gardens and fynbos horticulture. At the Bordjiesrif Education and Research Hub, adjacent to sheltered kelp forests, a tidal pool, rocky shores, and mountain walks, participants work directly within some of the most biodiverse ecological terrain on the Cape Peninsula. Together the two sites form a land-to-sea learning bridge and the first node in the Co-op’s longer Pan-African vision.

The Co-op runs programmes year-round, designed around the seasons, the tides, and the ecological cycles of the Cape Peninsula. School and youth programmes offer immersive sessions covering intertidal ecology, seaweed and plant identification, foraging, wild food preparation, coastal stewardship, strandlooping, mapping, arts, crafts, and storytelling. Science, food and independent art residencies are available for researchers, scientists, artists, and musicians from South Africa and internationally. Facilitation and education training equips teachers, community educators, and youth leaders with nature-based facilitation skills, plant and species identification, and the integration of outdoor learning environments into formal and non-formal educational curricula. Public and private participatory programmes include beach clean-ups, foraging walks, snorkelling, and citizen science workshops.

Tides of Care is the first step in a broader vision: a growing network of locally rooted learning sites across Africa, connected through shared values of ecological care, reciprocity, and restoration. The curriculum, science communication approaches, and participatory methodologies developed through the Cape Point pilot will become open-source educational resources, freely adaptable by communities across the continent through local Indigenous Knowledge Systems, ecological conditions, and community priorities.

The Veld and Sea Co-op welcomes strategic funding partnerships from foundations, trusts, and impact funds whose mandates align with biodiversity conservation, climate education, social justice, and African women’s environmental leadership. Media professionals, researchers, artists, and educators are invited to make contact to discuss access, residencies, collaborations, and storytelling opportunities. Members of the public are invited to join public programmes, volunteer, or share the Co-op’s work with relevant networks and communities.