Although the country continues to open up, the lockdown still negatively impacts the most vulnerable among us. Access to income, and therefore, the ability to put food on the table is a heart-wrenching challenge for too many South Africans right now.
Lorentzville, which has been the home of Nando’s head office affectionately known as Central Kitchen for more than 3 decades, is a particularly vulnerable community. So in addition to the successfull #StreetwisePERiPERiMcBurger campaign which saw Nando’s collaborating with KFC and McDonalds to feed South Africans in need across the country during Lockdown, Nando’s has expanded their relief efforts further to facilitate a feeding scheme in their home suburb of Lorentzville, Johannesburg.
This commitment kicked off in June with Nando’s providing family food parcels and ingredients to aid the Makers Valley Partnership in running their soup kitchen out of Victoria Yards. Nando’s has also partnered with Foakes Bakery at Victoria Yards and Wonderfontein Poultry, who have been baking bread and supplying eggs to add to the food parcels.
Mike Cathie, CEO of Nando’s South Africa says, “These are difficult times for everybody, but for the most vulnerable in our society, these times are utterly devastating. Feeding people is what we do best at Nando’s, so we are honoured to be able to do this for those who need it most and in our own back yard too.”
The food parcels include early childhood development activity packs that are designed to educate the community’s children on social distancing and sanitising and hand washing. In these parcels, children also receive tennis balls and sidewalk chalk to help them create pavement games.
Mpho Phalane and her team of volunteers at ‘Food I Love You” prepare warm meals for the soup kitchen with all funds directed towards the purchasing of ingredients, which then get handed out every Friday and Sunday.
Considering soup and bread go together, there is always freshly baked bread to enhance the meals thanks to the loving hands, hearts and ovens at Timbuktu in the Valley. Stitch, a community sewing circle based at Bethany House in the heart of Lorentzville, are sewing masks for both adults and children. These masks are handed out with the warm meals in order to help keep everyone safe.
To ensure that community members can comply with the current regulations, Amaya Delmas Studio at Victoria Yards has designed a poster to show the community how to wear and wash their masks.
“For the last month it has become abundantly clear to me that times of crisis can bring out the best in humanity,” says Cathie. “It has both inspired and humbled us to witness the coming together of so many hearts and minds to help a community in need. If this kind of collaboration continues, I have no doubt that we can all pull through this crisis as one nation and one community, together.”
