NPO ensures 20 000 families don’t go hungry during lockdown
THE UNLIMITED Child organisation, in partnership with Rise Against Hunger and Zero2Five Trust, supplied about 20 000 families from four provinces with food packs.
The chief executive of the NPO, Candice Potgieter, said although Unlimited Child focused on earlychildhood development (ECD) for children, they felt that it was important that youngsters do not go hungry during the lockdown because of not having access to ECD centres.
“We have a large network of ECD centres and we were able to go out and use our field monitors, so instead of them going and doing learning programmes, they went out in their vehicles and distributed food.”
Potgieter said through the NGO’s network of ECD centres, messages were sent to parents and guardians with times for them to come and collect the food parcels as well as paper-based learning programmes for education to continue at home.
“Through our partnerships with Rise Against Hunger and Zero2Five Trust, we managed to make sure that just over 20 000 families received food that would last a month, impacting almost 71 000 people,” she said.
The parcels were given to families in underprivileged communities in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State, Eastern
Cape and Gauteng last month just before the lockdown started.
Potgieter said the take-home learning materials that parents took home were learning-through-play activities for the children.
“These materials included easy-to-understand instructions in their respective home languages, on activities and games drawn from indigenous knowledge bases that communities would… understand, and be able to implement.” |