ICYMI: Young Scouts give back to others

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown many scouting members have stepped up to help community members in need.

Their projects have included doing grocery shopping and deliveries for the elderly, making masks, building local sanitising stations or by providing food parcels to needy families. For this year’s Mandela Day on 18 July, Scouts South Africa, the national organisation which promotes scouting, challenged its members to fill ‘Jars of Hope’ to give hungry families a warm meal.

The Sandton district responded to this challenge, and the children in the various branches, including Meerkats (five to six years old), Cubs (seven to 10 years old) and Scouts (11 to 18 years old) from each of the different Scout groups, collected 1 595 jars. A ‘Jar of Hope’ is simply a reusable glass jar or container, filled with dry rice, soup mix, lentils, soup powder and a stock cube.

One jar feeds four people or provides multiple meals to a single person. All that is required is to add boiling water.

Robin Ellis, a representative for the Sandton district, was thrilled with the response. “The number of jars collected is still being finalised by the groups and it will be interesting to see how many we finally contribute to the overall national total,” he said.

He offered a big thank you to the 1st Rivertrail Group which collected more than 850 jars, and to all the other Scout groups which supported the initiative. The jars were donated to local charities and feeding schemes, to help those families most impacted by the current lockdown.