The ongoing and worsening economic conditions resulting in food price hikes continue to deteriorate the lives of many South Africans.
A Community Nutritional Development Centre (CNDC), Bomme ba Boithatelo bo Botle, has been operating in Meloding, Virginia, since 2015. This project ensures that 160 nutritiously balanced plates of food are served daily to individuals who would otherwise go to bed without a meal.
“The ward we operate in is the biggest and most poverty stricken ward in Meloding. However, due to the demand, we are taking in people from other wards as well. Through the assistance of social workers, schools, clinics, community members and the councillor – persons that are in most need of food are registered at our centre to receive the meals,” explains CNDC member, Pulane Molale.
The CNDC employs ten permanent female staff members (and a seasonal male staffer), who each contribute a monthly fee to support the centre when food stocks dwindle. They rely on periodic contributions from the Department of Social Development (DSD), the National Lotteries Commission, local churches and businesses for food supplies.
The National Development Agency (NDA) recently granted R88 665,98 to the CNDC to help them upscale existing dining furniture, cooking and catering equipment to optimally prepare and serve meals.
The funds were also used to resuscitate an in-house vegetable garden and dbuy gardening tools, planting implements and a 5 000 litre water tank.
All CNDC members have attended courses in food preparation standards by the DSD, as well as training in financial and project management and governance from the NDA.
“We are serving poor people here, however, we take pride in ensuring that they are served with dignity – in a clean environment and utilising the best possible catering equipment. To generate an income, we rent out our catering equipment on weekends for community events. We wish to extend our services to our beneficiaries in future, to address even more social ills,” says member Dimakatso Ntsane.
In the Jerusalem Park, an informal settlement section of Thabong, another group of four women established Access2Success Primary Cooperative Limited in 2019. This agricultural organisation ensures access to fresh vegetables in the community.
“We turned a dumping site, lurking with danger, into a useful piece of land. Our organisation is fairly young, and we are working harder than ever now to secure our premises and fast track our vegetable production using open air permaculture and closed tunnel methods. Our development plan includes securing even bigger land and graduate to big scale farmers, employing more community members as we go” says co-operative member, Elisa Nziweni-Motsamai.
The co-operative received Covid-19 relief funds from the Department of Agriculture, start-up gardening implements from the DSD, NDA grant funding that contributed towards acquiring a sink borehole with a generator to power it up, and a 5 000 litre tank for water preservation. Harmony Gold provided shade net tunnels to kick-start operations.
