Background Information
Frank Wygold had a life interest in Natural History, extending back to his childhood in the 1930’s. After a career change from the British Navy he graduated as a physicist and later as both a mechanical and electrical engineer in the 1950’s.
He started and headed the organisation – Bioprobe which later became SERO (Scientific Environmental Research Organismic) in Britain during the 1960’s. This organisation had mobile field research laboratories, staffed and run as self contained units out in the field.
Franks passion was always education and job creation and creating opportunities for those he came into contact with, helping them to become independent and self sufficient. He moved to South Africa in the early 1980’s. He was a founder member of the Green Point Fleamarket which became a land mark institution of informal trading and self employment for many families operating and developing crafts and other salable goods.
He started the West Coast Fields Studies Centre (WCFSC) and sourced and collected the equipment over many years and offered the facilities to all scholars and adults interested in Natural History. He operated from a Philippi small holding and a also a small farm on the west coast near Darling. Frank became interested in the Paarden Eiland Wetlands in 1984, when he first visited it and saw the potential to set up a field study centre, as the site offers diverse habitats in a small area. And so the WCFSC laboratory was started after his perseverance to find a suitable building near to the Paarden Eiland Wetlands to house all the equipment. He moved into a disused section (boiler room and an adjacent building for the lab equipment and library) of the Brooklyn Chest Hospital overlooking the Zoarvlei (Paarden Eiland Wetlands). He offered varied and stimulating courses aimed at young naturalist’s from first year school children to university and technical students. They spent weekends collecting samples out in the veld and then working in the laboratory.
The Food Gardening pilot project was a joint initiative of the WCFSC in conjunction with the Habitat Council, the Provincial Administration of the Western Cape and the Brooklyn Chest Hospital, with support from the Blaauberg Sub Council of the City of Cape Town.
Our motto at the WCFSC is; We are each the architect of our own future. Every person has a duty to themselves, their dependants and society to qualify for self sufficiency and independence.
