Yesterday was a day of mixed emotions, as parents waved their children off to start the 2025 school year. Many parents are beaming proudly as they breathe a giant silent sigh of relief – the summer holidays have been long, costly and exhausting!!
January aka ‘Januworry’ has kicked in for parents, with the month dragging on before payday and for unemployed parents, the grants cannot come fast enough. Even with all the will in the world, when you couple festive season with back-to-school costs – juggling finances, is a nightmare.
Yesterday was a massive reality check for us. To mark the opening of schools and get a sense of the situation in one of our poorest communities, we visited Leonard and Amanda of Community Kids Pots. The couple are longstanding preschool beneficiaries of ours in Marikana, Philippi East.
To say it was an eye opening and heart wrenching experience is an understatement in the extreme, as the poverty in this neighbourhood is inconceivable.
The happy ‘shelter’ Leonard and Amanda have created is not just an Early Childhood Development Centre for 65 little ones but a beacon of hope. This is a place where tiny children are nurtured until they turn seven years old and go to big school, which will be a 7km walk away.
There are countless challenges facing this couple daily, ranging from lack of electricity and water to no sanitation services and limited basic resources. This is before they begin nurturing, nourishing, and growing the little ones in their care, who arrive daily against all odds. They toddle along, taking a traumatic journey, with or without parents – navigating the ditches and deep stagnant water while dodging bullets and baddies.
What warmed our hearts was seeing the big pot of healthy food bubbling away on the stove, ready to serve to the little ones and their Carers. The kitchen, which we managed to get sponsored a year or so back by The Excellence Group, was spotless.
Clearly a place of enormous pride for Amanda to conjure up delicious daily meals with the ample nutritious ingredients and veggies we provide weekly.
The more we visit our partner preschools, the more we realise what a game-changer nutritious food is to everyone. We wish you could have seen the joy on these little ones faces as we served them lunch and they tucked into their bowls of tomato and pilchard pasta.
We witnessed first-hand that every mouthful brings hope and happiness in a way that we cannot begin imagine.
Education starts with nutrition and to our existing donors and everyone who has signed up to support our ‘Feed the Future’ campaign – by sponsoring a child’s food every month, you are making a profound difference.
THANK YOU. ❤️
If you want to help and can – please do so now. It’s simple to sign up and sponsor a child or two for as little as R250 a month, as we feel the pressure financially to provide 7,000 children two meals daily. Here is the link: To become a monthly or once-off donor – kindly click here
With radical gratitude and appreciation,
Danny and the team at Ladles of Love ❤️
