Page 62 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic

“When we
had our first infection, there was a lot of chaos, because people weren’t sure how it would affect the rest of the town. Before that,
we didn’t have any infections. Afterwards,
the numbers just went ” skyrocketing.
Training workshops
R 5693
Grant given for data and connectivity
R 1788
During COVID, we saw a need to do our gender-based violence, women’s rights and labour rights workshops. We hosted 20 workshops at our crèche by making sure everyone was at the correct physical distance and wore masks. People only removed their masks to speak. SCAT also donated a thermometer, which we used to check temperatures.
communiTy supporT neTworks who helped
SCAT was our main supporter. Not only did it help us with food parcels, but it also provided us with laptops, cell phones, Wi-Fi and data bundles, so that we could work from home. Ceres Fruit Juices, the beverage company, supplied us with juice every week. It used to give us juice for our crèche learners, and when the crèche was closed, we were told that if we had a permit, we could collect 95 litres of juice a week. So, we also gave community members the juice when we served them meals.
Many volunteers helped us – people who came of their own free will to cook meals. Teenagers from the community helped us deliver the food parcels and indicated to us who needed food.
lessons from working during The covid-19 pandemic
What I’ve learnt is that for some people, poverty was there before COVID-19, but the pandemic brought our deep inequalities to the surface. The other big thing is the partnerships we developed during COVID-19 and how we’ve learnt to work together with other people during lockdown.
I would say, before COVID-19, we at The Witzenberg Rural Development Centre were in a dip. COVID-19 brought us closer together, and made us do more effective work. We learnt to think things through and plan properly. We had more time to reflect and it put us in a better place to serve our community.
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RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC
Witzenberg, distributing learning supplies to local children