Page 50 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic

“Our main concerns were children with malnutrition, people living with HIV/AIDS and TB patients, and people
who could not work, for whom we would prepare cooked meals in a hall
as part of our targeted feeding programme.”
Training workshops
R 5693
Grant given for data and connectivity
R 1788
municipal areas, doing COVID screening and testing. Luckily, we only identified two positive cases, on a farm in Paleisheuwel. Sadly, one of the women passed away three days after we took her to the hospital.
social impacT of covid-19
The biggest impact of the pandemic was hunger. We distributed most of our food parcels to farms, because some of the farm owners did not provide help. They didn’t want to give us access to the farms, although they only supported people with one food parcel. So, during lockdown levels 5, 4 and 3, we actually distributed 980 food parcels.
We also ran a soup kitchen in Eendekuil, a small community about 25 kilometres from Citrusdal. There, we delivered cooked food to people’s houses. We cooked and delivered the food, feeding between 190 and 210 people each day for three days, and the kitchen was open 3 days a week.
liefdersdiens and supporT neTworks
In Clanwilliam, all the churches formed a COVID-19 group called Liefdersdiens, which was a way of the community coming together to help each other. Every Friday, the farmers in Clanwilliam brought fresh produce, which we packaged and distributed to families.
SCAT also supported us a lot during this time. We were given R10,000 per month for food parcels, and a laptop, data, and a phone, to support our staff working from home. The IT equipment helped a lot.
We also have a good working relationship with the municipality. They supported us with 400 food parcels that we distributed on farms.
lessons from covid-19
It was stressful dealing with staff who didn’t have enough money, and when we had to cut salaries. We could not sleep at night, worrying about how to get donors on board and ask people to assist and support us. But through this stress, I learnt that our staff are supportive. They understand when we don’t have, and when things are down.
I also learnt that there are people who take advantage in difficult times. We have to sit down with our people and educate them to say “no, thank you”, if they have food, and to give someone else a chance... a neighbour who might be more in need.
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RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC