While SA Harvest’s charity activity of rescuing food and distributing it to those in need to fight hunger, serves the vital purpose of ensuring people do not starve. However, the act of charity will not end hunger, which is SA Harvest’s ultimate mission, and we are engaged on many fronts to tackle the systemic issues that cause hunger in the first place.
SA Harvest’s two areas of current focus in developing sustainable solutions to hunger are:
- Employment and entrepreneurial training and support to ensure food sovereignty and zero reliance on charity.
- The process to ensure that Section 27 and 28 of the South African Bill of Rights are honoured by the Government. Section 27 sets out the right to access to sufficient food and water, while Section 28 focuses on the rights of children, and includes provisions related to their access to basic nutrition, shelter, healthcare services, and social services. Together, these provisions recognize the importance of ensuring that all South Africans have access to basic necessities like food and water, and place obligations on the government to take steps to achieve this goal.
Both of these processes are well underway and all action on the ground that SA Harvest takes in the future will completely integrate the charity and systemic strategies. We have an exciting flagship project underway in Lusikisiki that will form the foundation of our strategy in the future.
The #UnionAgainstHunger forms part of SA Harvest’s systemic intervention pillar and is focused on advocacy, with the objective of creating awareness of the facts relating to hunger and food waste, of the constitutional right of every South African to enough nutritious food, and of the need, and examples of, systemic interventions to address the root causes of hunger in our country so that we, together, can end hunger.
The facts are shocking: 10,3 million tonnes of good food goes to waste every year. That’s 30,3 billion meals, which is enough to feed every one of the 20 million people who are classified as food vulnerable three nourishing meals a day for almost 18 months. This situation means the charitable action of rescuing good food that would end up in landfill causing damage to the environment mainly through the emission of methane gas, and redirecting it to hungry, malnourished men, women and children, is completely necessary at this time. In this regard, SA Harvest has, in the last 38 months delivered 38 million nutrition meals to our beneficiaries countrywide.
We know that in the long-term charity is not the solution to ending hunger and we are on the path to ensuring that the systemic causes of hunger become part of the South African fabric in terms of awareness and action. It’s a long road but we are totally committed to it and we know that we will succeed, with the help of other organisations, corporate South Africa and the South African people to end Hunger in our wonderful country.
2023 is the year for change!