NPOs team up for massive food rollout

The collaboration project aimed to deliver 720 000 meals to children at ECD centres in KwaZulu-Natal.

Pictured with a 5kg bag of My Life porridge are Bongomusa Dlamini, Esihle Majola, Kuhlekonke Khubo from the Luthando Day Care in Dassenhoek. PHOTO: Rogan Ward

THE local non-profit organisation, Zero2Five Trust, in partnership with the Victor Daitz Foundation, aims to provide 720 000 meals to children by Friday, 15 January.

The massive relief operation of 36 tonnes of fortified breakfast porridges started in the first week of December and will be completed on Friday, 15 January. The total food relief will translate into 720 000 meals.

Pietermaritzburg-based Truda Foods assisted with subsidised rates for the food and transported the goods across KwaZulu-Natal to central distribution points in the uThukhela, Illemba, Kind Cetshwayo, uMgungundlovu districts and the outer west in eThekwini. From there, the Zero2Five bakkie transported the parcels to rural early childhood development (ECD) centres for the children to take home.

“The six weeks of December holidays present a huge food security problem for millions of South African children who depend on school meals and, in 2020, this applied multifold. What a great call from our partner organisation, the Victor Daitz Foundation, to set a big bundle of funds aside, specifically for filling the school meal gap with nutritious meals,” said Zero2Five’s Julika Falconer.

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Zero2Five provides nutritional and educational support to children in more than 400 under-resourced ECD centres in vulnerable, mostly rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. It also provides education and training for ECD practitioners and assists the centres with registration at the Department of Social Development (DSD) as well as the application for ECD subsidies.

Brian Moshal, the managing trustee of the Victor Daitz Foundation, said, “At the end of 2020, our board decided that something had to be done to ameliorate the ravages of the Covid-19 plague. What better than to call Julika Falconer from the Zero2Five Trust to equitably distribute fortified food to the most vulnerable in our KwaZulu-Natal communities. We are truly thankful to them for the enormous effort they have put into making this project successful.”

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At the time of going to press, the contents of this feature mirrored South Africa’s lockdown regulations.

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