Page 15 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic

Food distribution, Dordrecht Legal Advice and Community Development Agency
and Durban were the most affected. It was people who were earning a living who died, some of them bread winners. There were also many teachers who received certificates saying they were not fit for their jobs. At the Chris Hani Primary School, 19 out of 24 teachers did not return to school, due to their comorbidities of high blood pressure, heart disease and other chronic diseases. As a result, the Department of Education had to employ temporary teachers, many of whom only had a grade 12 qualification.
projecTs and programmes in response To The covid-19 pandemic
With funding from SCAT, we handed out food parcels to the needy, particularly the child-headed households, and also supplied five schools with 50 masks each. This was nowhere near enough, as Chris Hani Primary School alone has about 1,240 learners.
We received 1,000 food parcels from SCAT in the beginning, which we distributed. Thereafter, from June 2020, SCAT gave us enough food parcels to give to 30 people per month. We worked in cooperation with ward committees, who know every household in the area, to identify the families most in need of food parcels. We distributed pamphlets about COVID-19 on social grant pay days and assisted clients who applied for the extra R350 social relief grant from SASSA.
We also had two groups of people, ten youth and ten women, who participated in our household garden project. We provided potato, cabbage, onion, spinach, butternut and carrot seeds, and tools for households to plant their own vegetable gardens in their yards.
supporT neTworks during covid-19
We were assisted in our work over this period by officials working in the Departments of Social Development and Agriculture, and the ward committees. The only non- government organisation that supported us was SCAT, which gave us R10,000 every month to buy food parcels for the needy. We had regular virtual meetings with SCAT staff, and now I am attending a training course through Zoom on wellness. SCAT also provided us with a laptop, cellphone, Wi-Fi and data.
Food parcels distributed
120
COVID grant funding given to LDA’s
R 50 000
PPE distributed
250
RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC
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