Page 44 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic
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 Food parcels distributed
84
COVID grant funding given to LDA’s
R 50 000
PPE distributed
1568
Left to right: Sassa Maretela (Youth Bank Project Manager), Micheal Besent and Kgalalelo Lebatlang (Youth Bank Secretary)
people who were working away from home couldn’t come home. It was very bad. People working as seasonal farmworkers couldn’t come back to their homes. They were stuck down there at their work in Upington and couldn’t come back to Pampierstad. Then, on level 2, some of them returned and died, leaving households and families without means of support. Many children don’t have parents anymore because of COVID-19. They are left in their homes, and some as young as 11 years old have to take care of their siblings. We have tried to send children to orphanages in Kimberly, far from here.
During level 5, everyone was so shocked. We couldn’t go far. We couldn’t go out. People were scared. We encouraged people to do testing and screening. That’s all we could do. We were going to work at 08h30 and back home at lunch. Our work was minimal. Now, you see people with masks, they are sanitising, they are aware of what’s happening.
With regard to gender-based violence, fortunately I read a book that deals with it, so was able to do some counselling with people in the community, getting them to sort out the problem before it flared up. My belief is that a man who goes to jail becomes a hardened criminal, so we must rather identify the root of the problem and deal with it. The problem is communication – and the pressures on a man who was earning a salary but is now off from work without earning. I talked to a man and woman, stressing the need for good communication, and assisted them to apply for grants. One of our main roles is applying for grants for community members.
We’ve also been involved with communal gardening. At least the Department of Agriculture gave us seeds and plants for this purpose.
projecTs and programmes in response To The covid-19 pandemic
We would make food parcels for people, but they were not adequate, as we only managed to distribute 40 to 50. We did receive donations of food from businesses like Shoprite, Spar and Checkers. We had youth volunteers helping community members apply for grants, who also supplied food parcels daily and identified the vulnerable.
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RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC




















































































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