“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest” – Nelson Mandela
COVID-19 has aggravated food insecurity for many communities in South Africa. Millions of livelihoods have been lost, and people have become increasingly dependent on one another to survive. According to Ipsos, “Almost half (46%) of adult South Africans surveyed in late 2020 said that their households often had to go to bed hungry during the pandemic as they did not have enough money for food.
For this year’s Mandela Day, the call to action for the people of South Africa was for each of us to ignite the embers of ubuntu and tackle food insecurity by working together, with the theme for 2021 being – ‘one hand can feed another’.
In support of this year’s theme, Novus Holdings encouraged everyone across the Group to honour Madiba and donate an item of non-perishable foods and be part of the change.
More than 380 items were collected which included canned products, cup-a-soup, teabags, coffee, sugar, beans, dry pasta, rice and cereal.
Novus Holdings donated the items to a feeding programme through Breadline Africa, that offers soup kitchen style meals to 44 projects, in 85 communities and provides more than two million meals to those in need.
All 380 items collected by Novus Holdings, were given to a Delft based soup kitchen who feeds more than 700 people a day, comprising mostly of young children and the elderly.
