The last few days in January have been exceptional for us, especially given that we have had an unprecedented opportunity to review our exponential impact on our people, communities and planet. Not to mention, we had the immense privilege of welcoming 140 admirable preschool women to our ever-growing Ladles of Love warehouse.
We are so deeply entrenched in ‘doing’ that seldom do we see an overview of our social impact and realise the enormity of what we have achieved together. It gives us great pride and immense gratitude to share with you our 16th Donor Report. We have evolved our Donor Report to a Donor Impact Report, focusing on bringing you, our supporters, authentic outcome-based stories, infographics and information.
In this report, you will see the impact of the shift in our focus, as we moved from community crisis food relief, to focusing on supporting preschool children’s education with nutrition. We love bringing you stories weekly in this newsletter but today you’re able to get the full picture, as this report includes all our programmes and makes for a quick, fascinating read.
More and more, we are learning that our output as an organisation, is not nearly as important as the outcome and the impact thereof. It is no longer enough to provide bulk nutritious food, we need to back this up with training, uplifting, monitoring, evaluating, tracking and tracing – in order to achieve results, report and evolve.
On Saturday 25 January, we hosted the first of four ‘preschool nutrition workshops’ for 2025. Our aim is to ensure the nutrition we provide offers the children brilliant results. The women attending had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and learned, with the help of our dietician and chef, ‘how healthy food and proper meal plans have the power to make a difference’ and ‘how to prepare delicious healthy dishes for children’ during an interactive cooking demo. All in all it was a rip-roaring success.
As a founder it was a proud moment and let me share my story with you: “What a day it was when 140 preschool principals, carers and teachers arrived at our warehouse. There was engagement, there was food and there was even dancing and singing. But what pulled at my heart the most was when I was on the stage and one of our principals, Theodora from Inkwenkwezi, stood up and said, “Danny, you are a white man, but your heart is as black as all the black people here today,” and with that everyone stood and started singing and dancing for me.
Ladles of Love was founded on the Sanskrit word Seva, meaning giving of yourself wanting nothing in return – not even the joy that giving brings to your heart.
But what I have learnt in the 10 years of service to our community, what is a non-negotiable, is that you will get in return. Moments like this are priceless and worth every bit the 10 years of selfless service.”
Thank you for walking this journey with us and as you can see, together we are making a huge impact and a massive difference.
With gratitude and appreciation,
Danny and the team at Ladles of Love ❤️
