NPO provides food parcels to 2,500 families

For thousands of vulnerable people in SA, a grocery parcel means more than just food on the table — it offers peace of mind and dignity.

For the next three months, about 2,500 families across SA will worry less about where their next meal will come from after receiving food parcels from the Meals on Wheels Community Service and financial services provider FirstRand.

Throughout July, the two organisations distributed grocery parcels to vulnerable households across the country, providing enough essential food items to sustain families for up to three months while also promoting long-term food security initiatives.

On Friday, volunteers from FirstRand and Meals on Wheels packed the final 100 food parcels at FirstRand’s offices near Menlyn Mall in Pretoria before they were dispatched to beneficiaries in Atteridgeville, a township west of Pretoria.

Each parcel contains household essentials including maize meal, rice, cooking oil, canned beans, canned fish, peanut butter, tea bags and soup – enough to help sustain a family for about three months.

Meals on Wheels’ skills and development manager Yanela Takawira said the organisation wants to equip communities with the skills to become food secure and eventually self-reliant.

“We are planting gardens because it is important to us that we teach people how to produce their own food,” she said. “We teach people food security because the moment you cannot provide for yourself or have food to put on the table, that is when we have a crisis.”

Meals on Wheels is a non-profit organisation that provides cooked, nutritious meals, social support, and wellness checks to vulnerable individuals, home-bound persons, and the elderly.

Operating across all nine provinces through about 179 community kitchens and service points, the organisation delivers over 200,000 meals daily with the help of dedicated volunteers.

Its partnership with FirstRand started last year.

“Our relationship with FirstRand is long-lasting and not just a tick of a box; we are not just doing it for [the Nelson] Mandela [Month] activation,” Takawira said.

“We are going to be doing this [planting vegetable gardens] at primary schools and NGOs, and we will be training the beneficiaries to make sure that they have the knowledge that they need to actually produce quality crops. The bigger picture is for them to sell the crops and be self-sustainable.”

For FirstRand, the activation forms part of its broader employee volunteering programme, aimed at encouraging its workers to use their time and skills to support registered causes that matter to them, while creating a meaningful social impact.

FirstRand volunteer coordinator Solomon Mzinyani said giving back does not end in July. “There is a need to do this more often and to be intentional,” he said.

Sowetan