Local foundation feeding thousands from just four kitchens

IT all started with one lady in 2003. Joan Smith’s efforts to feed the poor and homeless 14 years ago has transformed into a feeding programme run by Durban North non-profit organisation, The Domino Foundation who last year, made around 900 000 meals.

“It takes a lot of people to run the feeding programme,” admitted programme leader, Cathy Whittle. She has been in charge of making sure that people across 77 institutions around Durban are given something to eat daily for a year and a half now. The programme supplies daily meals to a range of places, from local schools to Early Childhood Development centres, as well as church feeding schemes, clinics and hospitals.

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The Domino Foundation became involved in 2005. “The foundation’s aim is always to help people who work to help others and have their own NPO, by taking away the cumbersome burden of the administrative operations that often impede and hurt such efforts. We exist for the programme. There would be no Domino Foundation without such schemes that help other people,” said Rowan Philips, the foundation’s marketing manager.

The feeding programme has four kitchens in Durban North, Amaoti, Waterloo and Amanzimtoti. They work with Joint Aid Management and corporate sponsors, who donate most the supply of ingredients needed to make sandwiches, porridge and soup every day.

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Whittle said, “With just three permanent staff in our Durban North kitchen, we rely heavily on volunteers and donations to make sandwiches every day that go mostly to schools around the area. Having a meal each day is something that can taken for granted. For example we regularly supply meals for learners at prominent schools as well as the less the affluent ones.”

The number of meals made are staggering: Whittle said that during April, because of the frequent public holidays the kitchens only operated over a total of 10 days. In that time span, 53 436 meals were made, of which there were 116 000 sandwiches, 266 640 bowls of porridge, and 15 000 bowls of soup that were fed to 53 430 people across the programme.

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“With so many people simply needing a meal each day, I have to deal with a lot of numbers to make sure that every person or child has something in their belly. There are a lot of people who make this a reality, so my job is to co-ordinate everything,” explained Whittle.

Despite the astonishing amount of meals that the programme already makes, the programme’s leader is confident that they will reach a million by the end of 2017.

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