In our last newsletter we explained that we’d hit a funding crisis. We are hugely grateful to those who’ve stepped up to the plate to enable us to continue our work for the time being. These include Old Mutual, Denny, Spur and others. Thank you!
We also introduced the Fill the Gap Club, our membership scheme. We’re deeply grateful to those who responded to the call and signed up to join us in the fight against hunger in South Africa. We hope that the club will attract lots of new members. Our goal is to sign up 2,011 members in this, the year 2011. If 2,011 people decided to Fill the Gap for One – pledging to give R75 a month – we could make hunger history for 2,011 people in our country! For some of us, R75 is about what we spend on take-away coffees in a WEEK.
Tragically, when times are tight and the poor need more help than ever, food manufacturers have less food to donate. Our food volumes have declined recently, partly because of the tough economic conditions and partly because we’ve had to focus our efforts on survival. We are, however, thrilled that we’ve identified several new sources of food. We’re now working hard to boost the volume of food we give to our “Boss”, the hungry.
In the last week our chairman William Mzimba met with President Jacob Zuma, while I and others met with the Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini, and the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson. All these government leaders were tremendously supportive of FoodBank. We hope to translate these sentiments into funding as soon as possible. We have various other initiatives to create sustainable funding – but more about these in future newsletters.
Until next time,
Alan
