Donation Day for Sonwabo & Blossom Primary – 21 July 2020

This article was originally written for The Cape Times – IOL

NGO donates food parcels, learning material to needy Cape Town schools

Local NGO Living Through Learning yesterday donated 300 food parcels and learning material to Blossom Street and Sonwabo primary schools.

We have to stay motivated, we have to keep helping especially with parents not being employed and there is hunger out there, you can’t teach a hungry child and that is why we sort of diversified a little into feeding and teaching because they go hand in hand

Sonja Botha

Donated food included rice, samp, tea, coffee, sugar, porridge, toilet rolls, pilchards, bath soap, Melsi soya mince, beef, and cooking oil. NGO director Sonja Botha said they were looking forward to distributing more food parcels to schools around the City during the lockdown.

“(During) this lockdown we did not stop working but we could not do education, so we got involved with food deliveries in the communities like Delft. In two months we have fed about 10000 children. We give them little booklets where they can do activities and read. Lunch Box gave us 300 boxes, each box is valued around R300.”

Acting principal at Blossom Street Primary Rodney Layman agreed the community was in need.

The donations today by Living Through Learning were great. Our learners come from different places such as Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Philippi and Silvertown, a vast area. Especially now during this time of Covid-19, it has affected our economy so badly and most of the parents are sitting home, they have not been working for months since the lockdown started.”

Rodney Laymen – Blossom Street Primary

For some families, the food parcel would be the only food they received.

“They have also donated data so that children can be able to do school work from home,” said Layman.

Together with the parcels that Lunch box donated, LTL ensured that literacy was promoted by pasting 5 different stories to the box for the learners to read. These stories varied in difficulty and we asked the teachers and parents to ensure that learners keep on reading.