Mamas Alliance Celebrates World Food Safety Day

World Food Safety Day, which is celebrated on Monday, 7 June 2021, aims to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risks, which contribute to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture....

market access, tourism, and sustainable development. 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there is no food security without food safety. Ending hunger is about all people having access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food all year round.

This World Food Safety Day, CSI Agency MAMAS Alliance would like to highlight the importance of promoting home and community food gardens, especially with the increasing unemployment rates, at their record highest ever, at 32.6%.

One of the many objectives of MAMAS Alliance is to demonstrate and drive the effectiveness and crucial value of grassroots, community-driven initiatives and to provide structural and practical daily care to the most vulnerable and needy children and youth.

Nutritional programmes and agriculture and food gardens are just some of these practical community driven initiatives driven by some of the 33 independent and autonomous grassroots organisations operating from more than 75 sites across South Africa, which form part of the MAMAS Alliance network.

An existing situation made worse by the pandemic, many families battle with low or no income, leaving them without food for days on end. MAMAS Alliance, and various NGOs that partner with them, have offered a significant amount of help to these communities by providing them with at-home vegetable gardens and food supplies.

One example is the Household Garden Programme launched by Thanda, a community-based organisation that provides innovative solutions for sustainable development in rural KwaZulu Natal.

“This programme has continued to support non-stop since it started in November 2020, helping 321 interested households in our Early Learning and Education initiatives to start their own vegetable gardens at home. 241 of these households were started through funding from the MAMAS Alliance. When the pandemic reached our shores in 2020, we mobilised quickly in providing two hundred 900kg of food parcels to our programme enrolees to ensure that there was food on our community members’ tables,” says Thanda co-founder, Angela Larkan.

“Still, we knew this couldn't be a long-term solution. Instead of developing a situation where community members are dependent on Thanda for their sustenance, we started developing empowerment ideas,” she says, one of which is the Household Garden Programme, which empowers families to grow their own food.

According to Larkan, one-quarter of children in South Africa suffer from stunting due to malnutrition with approximately 13–15 million people having either inadequate or severely inadequate access to food.

Thanda also offers mentoring and support through their Organic Farming Programme, which empowers community members to sustainably improve household nutrition, strengthen self-reliance, and build a local economy.

Another community initiative is CATCH, an NGO that works in the informal settlement of Mzamomhle near East London, where 40 000 people are impacted by poverty, violence and HIV AIDS. The property on which CATCH operates was donated by Mercedes Benz in 2003.

“161 families farm vegetables on the CATCH site for the purpose of boosting family nutritional needs and marketing part of their harvest for income generation. There are 900 people in the 161 households, 457 of them being children. Apart from the opportunity to farm vegetables, the members of these households have access to other CATCH programmes for example, Victim Empowerment, Gender Based Violence Support Group, HIV & AIDS Support Group, Tertiary Education Support, Children and Youth Clubs,” says Sue Davies of CATCH Projects.

“CATCH has been affiliated to MAMAS Alliance since 2013. The progress made in improving the effectiveness of the Food Gardens Project and the increase in the number of beneficiaries served is due to the amazing support CATCH has experienced from this valued partner,” she says.

Ntsoanatsatsi, an NGO based in Phuthaditjhaba in the Free State, provides quality care and support to children and their families. In 2020 and 2021, through the MAMAS Alliance Growing Together and MAMAS Emergency Relief Funding, community food parcels and the establishment of homestead gardens was initiated to assist with the consequences of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown.

This initiative provided 303 unemployed families living in extreme poverty with food parcels for a period of 3 months as well as an opportunity to establish their own homestead gardens with equipment and seeds received through this funding.

“The funding allocated by MAMAS Alliance managed to assist Toy Library Food Garden to feed 411 orphaned and vulnerable children and 303 unemployed families with the establishment of the food garden, which is monitored and supported by 10 gardeners,” says Kate Molefe of Ntsoanatsatsi Educare Trust. She says that the excellent results from this food garden initiative now sustains over 1 000 family members with food relief.

Teaching communities how to create and sustain food gardens is proving a valuable way to improve food security and access better nutrition, while providing these communities with a sense of empowerment.

Funds directed by corporate CSI spend through MAMAS Alliance guarantees that 100% of the funds invested in a CSI project go directly to the intended NGO and community beneficiaries.

For more information, go to https://www.mamasalliance.com/.