Daily Maverick and SA Harvest have launched their third annual festive season campaign to combat hunger in the Eastern Cape. This year’s focus is on supporting three holiday programmes. These initiatives are crucial for keeping children safe and fed during the school break, especially since the regular school nutrition programme is suspended for the year.
Earlier this year, Director-General of Health Sandile Buthelezi and the head of the Eastern Cape Department of Health delivered a presentation to the South African Human Rights Commission. Buthelezi highlighted that, among other issues, it was of great concern that the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, which had not in the past suffered the high levels of severe acute malnutrition that had struck the Eastern Cape’s rural areas, now had among the highest levels of malnutrition in the province. It’s with this foremost in mind that Daily Maverick and SA Harvest will launch the third festive season campaign to relieve hunger in the Eastern Cape.
This year, we will focus on three holiday programmes where children can be kept safe and fed, despite the school nutrition programme now being shut down for the year. You can read about previous years’ campaignshere,here,hereandhere. We will start in Nelson Mandela Bay but, if we receive enough support, we will extend the holiday programme nationally later in December and January.
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Daily Maverick editor-in-chief Jillian Green said proper nutrition is the foundation of a child’s physical and mental wellbeing, and access to it should not stop when schools close for the year. “It is heartbreaking to see malnutrition rising in Nelson Mandela Bay and elsewhere in our country, but these buckets offer a tangible short-term solution – a veritable lifeline where the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Daily Maverick readers have, in the past few years, generously helped us feed hundreds of children over the festive period.
I have no doubt that they will do so again.” Ozzy Nel, the CEO of SA Harvest, said: “Every December, the same harsh truth confronts us: hunger doesn’t go on holiday. But neither does humanity. These Buckets of Nutrition are more than food; they are a message to families in Missionvale that they have not been forgotten.
When we place a bucket in a caregiver’s hands, we’re saying: ‘Your struggle matters. Your children matter. And we are in this with you.’” The buckets are more expensive than last year, at R1,000 apiece.
Still, they contain significantly more nutritious food products, a few treats and some cleaning materials that will be sufficient to carry families into the new year. Any donation towards a bucket will do; it isn’t necessary to contribute the full amount.
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