Other Grassroots Projects

Project 8 – Eastern Cape’s Informal Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre’s
Food 4 Africa has been a partner in providing nutritional feeding to 15 informal ECD Centre’s. The conditions of these centres leave much to be desired. There is an urgent and dire need to upgrade the facilities, provide ECD and business training to the centres. It is of utmost importance that we continue the nutritional feeding. There are over 1900 extremely vulnerable children between the age of 3-months and 5 who attend these centres daily.

Project 8 – Sikhula Sonke
Sikhula Sonke’s AIM is to meet the desperate need for pre-school education in the disadvantaged Khayelitsha community (Western Cape) by training and empowering child care workers and parents in Early Childhood Development (ECD).

Project 9 – John Wesley Community Centre (JWCC)
JWCC is located in Etwatwa (Daveyton – Gauteng). This is a highly disadvantaged community with a number of squatter camps / informal settlements.

JWCC’s main activities include HIV/AIDS community awareness and support; OVC care and support, drama clubs at schools; support groups; home base care; after school care; feeding schemes; provision of monthly food parcels; sporting activities; computer club; sewing club; play therapy; clothes and goods distribution.

Project 10 – The Music Therapy Community Clinic (MTCC)
The PRIMARY AIM of MTCC is to render professional music therapy services to underprivileged children (OVC) and youth in poor communities within the GREATER CAPE TOWN area. The broader vision is to use active music-making to have an impact on the psychosocial fabric of the communities in which we work. Cognitive, social and intellectual stimulation is provided for OVC, as well as a platform for dealing with their trauma particularly HIV/AIDS and gang violence.

Project 11 – Food 4 Africa: Nutritional Feeding for Children
The following is an extract from the United Nations World Food Programme: World Hunger Series 2006 – Hunger & Learning that sums up why nutritional feeding is of superior importance for children’s development.

“Hunger in childhood can lead to irreversible mental stunting, lower intelligence quotients (IQ’s) and reduced capacities to learn….… The impacts are especially great because hunger and learning have a two-way relationship. Hunger impairs learning at each stage of life; yet learning is an effective means of addressing hunger. A vicious cycle can be created: hungry children become damaged adults with limited opportunities and capacities, who end up having hungry children of their own. Such a cycle undermines human and economic development. But this cycle can also be reversed with good nutrition and enhanced learning reinforcing each other through the generations and leading to long term national development….

Hunger limits ….. Opportunities in a number of ways – by causing deaths, physical stunting and mental retardation”.

Food 4 Africa’s fundraises in order to produce and distribute a nutroceutical cereal to organisations that assist children infected / affected by HIV/AIDS (particularly pre & primary schools) and / or adults living with HIV/AIDS.

The nutroceutical cereal provides the essential vitamins and minerals that poverty stricken children need to develop a healthy immune system and brain by the age of twelve so that they can contribute constructively to a sustainable future for all. This type of nutritional feeding is most cost effective as it is easier to distribute and more importantly, easy to prepare by just adding water.