Daycare in R’fontein among 50 in SA to benefit from food garden

The Do More Foundation (DMF) has enlisted employee volunteers to make a tangible difference that stretches further than World Food Day held recently.

With the theme ‘Water is Life, Water is Food, Leave No One Behind’, DMF launched their October plan of planting veggie gardens, making warm chicken meals and installing JoJo tanks at 50 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres across the country last week, including Mphebana Pre and Day Care in Rand West City.

“At RCL FOODS’ main office in Westville, we hosted our national event, we had volunteers prepping nutritious meals for 10 ECD centres reaching 1 000 young children in the Chesterville, Durban area with food sponsored by Sunshine Bakery, Rama and Rainbow Chicken,” said DMF partnership lead, Iris Naidoo. This was one of 23 events taking place across South Africa.

“Thanks to the incredible support from RCL FOODS, Chep, KFC, Pep Store, Rainbow, Sunbake, Sunshine Bakery, Rama, Vector, JoJo Tanks and Anchor Yeast, this campaign benefitted over 6 500 young children at ECD centres in seven provinces.”

According to Iris, the organisation is truly inspired by the assistance from volunteers and the support received from corporates, with a total of 500 volunteers joining the campaign across the country.

“We planted food gardens at each of these 50 centres, donated water tanks and provided agricultural training to the centres so that these gardens can become a sustainable food source for these centres in the future,” she said.

With the assistance of ‘DoMore Heroes’ (employee volunteers of RCL FOODS, Vector, Rainbow and Siqalo), the ECD centres that were impacted throughout this campaign were based in Linbro Park, Malelane, Midrand, Hammarsdale, Randfontein, Centurion, Westville, Benoni, Nelspruit, Pretoria West, Rustenburg, Tzaneen, Durban North, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, Wolwehoek, Worcester.

To date, DMF has launched various National Young Child programmes directed at improving nutrition, and early learning and providing parent/ caregiver support across the country.

The foundation also facilitates several deep-rooted community-specific development projects to promote universal access to a comprehensive package of quality services to meet young children’s developmental rights and needs as outlined in the National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy and Nurturing Care framework.