Over the last few weeks FoodBank South Africa has started to engage a number of wonderful organisations and individuals who contacted us in order to set up a FoodBank in their community. The process is an exciting challenge for us as FoodBank South Africa and the next big step towards alleviating hunger in this country.
In order to create a stronger connection and trust between FoodBank and the organisations we have started holding fortnightly teleconferences sharing updates on current developments. The emerging foodbanks are also given the chance to ask questions directly to FoodBank South Africa, and to work at a plan of engagement to establish a community FoodBank in their region.
Following up these first steps our national logistics manager, Pele Phakoe took a trip in late October to take a closer look at the organisations. Having worked for various feeding programmes since the early days of his career, he has the experience and eye for a well run operation. In co-operation with the local contact person he will evaluate if the emerging prospective foodbanks meet the minimum requirements to sign our letter of engagement.
In order to do so, Pele is travelling through the five provinces where FoodBank does not yet have an established FoodBank, putting almost 2000 kilometers on the clock. His stops included Polokwane in Limpopo, Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, Rustenburg in the North West, Kimberley in the Northern Cape and Bloemfontein in the Free State. We hope, that by the end of 2009, we can announce that FoodBank has incubating or established FoodBanks in all nine provinces of South Africa.
