Western Cape schools serve over 1 million meals to learners during lockdown
13 May 2020
Over 1 million meals have been served in the past month as part of the Western Cape Education Department’s emergency school feeding programme.
This is a tremendous achievement, made possible by the school staff, management teams, volunteers, and WCED officials who answered the call to feed vulnerable children.
The National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) itself does not usually run during school holidays. However, this is not ‘business as usual’.
The WCED could not ignore the impact of the lockdown on the nutrition of school learners who rely on the programme, and we needed to find a way to support these learners.
With additional funding from the Provincial Treasury for emergency feeding, WCED schools began to provide takeaway meals for learners through an emergency programme across the Province in the week of 6-10 April 2020.
Since then, over 1.2 million meals have been served to learners!
(1 222 082 meals to be exact as of 12 May 2020)
An average of 65 000 learners receive food on each of the two days a week that meals are served.
This is a massive achievement, especially in the environment in which we all live in now.
This achievement lies solely on the shoulders of those who fought hard to get the programme up and running and those that were on the ground ensuring that meals were provided and safety protocols were in place.
A very big THANK YOU to all the members of our school communities, as well as departmental officials, who have committed themselves to ensuring that vulnerable learners do not go hungry.
We are also very grateful to the many organisations, businesses and personal contributions from families and the farming community to supplement meals.
They have all shown just what is possible when we work together as a team. They are true value-drivers!
