Motherhood inspired charity
Love Story feeds, uplifts poor and homeless
MOTHER of four, humanitarian at heart and founder of charity organisation Love Story, Elaine Watson said it was after the birth of her first child that she knew she had to help those less fortunate than her.
Watson, 34, who has been nominated for The Herald Citizen of the Year, now stands in line to become a finalist in the prestigious competition that hails unsung heroes.
Watson said it was after the birth of her first child, Noa, now six, that she developed a deep sense of care for people and, five years ago, started Love Story.
“The need is so overwhelming and seeing what many disadvantaged people in our society face was a real eye-opener,” she said.
“Before I became a mother I couldn’t really understand what people who have nothing experienced.”
After graduating from the University of Pretoria with a journalism degree, Watson, 34, relocated to Cape Town where she did event planning and had her own wedding planning company before meeting her husband, Luke.
Following a two-year stint in the United Kingdom where Luke played rugby in Bath, the pair returned to South Africa and set up home in Port Elizabeth.
In 2012, Watson started a soup kitchen in the city centre to help feed people living on the streets.
Starting off by making soup in her kitchen at home, Love Story now has its own premises in Albany Road where donations are sorted and distributed across the city.
Soup is also prepared daily at the premises to cater for 200-odd homeless and destitute people who meet behind City Hall each evening for a warm meal.
“The first night there were about 10 or 20 people, most of them car guards but we ran out of food, so I quickly went up to Vovo Telo [in Richmond Hill] and bought a few gourmet sandwiches which we handed out,” she said.
Since then, Watson and her team of volunteers have been supplying a hearty warm meal every night of the week as well as supplying food and other items to charity organisations across the Bay.
“Starting the soup kitchen was a bit difficult at first because you need to build relationships and connections to have people to give to,” she said adding that it was important to nurture those relationships to not come across as a fly-by- night group.
“You can’t just drive in and drop off – it’s about equipping and empowering people in the communities,” she said.
Receiving the majority of her foodstuff from supermarkets, Watson said it was not only about filling the basic need of “filling the tummy” but also to offer love, hope and grace to people who felt pushed out of society because of their circumstances.
“These people need to talk and share their experiences. Life has handed them a bad hand [and in most cases] not by their own doing.
“They are not there by choice, nobody wants to live on the streets ,” she said.
For the first few years, Love Story was fully funded by Watson and her husband but, recently, they had to look at other avenues to generate some much-needed revenue, which saw the creation of The Valley Market and Goodnight Market.
Recently, Love Story has taken six people off the streets by offering them the opportunity to make money for themselves by refurbishing donated wooden pallets to strip and build into various items such as tables and chairs.
On a monthly basis, Love Story supplies up to 250 pamper packs for mothers of newborn babies at Dora Nginza Hospital and feeds up to 40 000 people through their soup kitchen initiative.