In May last year, during our lockdown period, food security became a real issue for the most vulnerable in our local communities. It was with this in mind that The Thornybush Community Projects, together with Nourish Eco Village set out to lend a hand.
The incredible success of this fund raiser far exceeded our expectations thanks to the unbelievably generous donations that were received, in the form of vouchers through The Thornybush Family Food Fundraiser. We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that donated, you definitely made a difference to many people’s lives.
Over an 8 month period 120 families were fed through Nourish Eco Village as well as 250 families from Thornybush and the greater community were also provided for. If you think the majority of households are made up of around 6 people, that means that on average 2,220 people were positively impacted per month over an 8 month period.
From project inception on 1 May 2020, to its completion on 31 December 2020, 370 families were fed consistently every month for 8 months. What is incredible is that the initial goal was 350 families, but due to the generous financial support we received, we could increase this by 20 more families per month.
Through the online “Back a Buddy” platform as well as working with our many networks we managed to raise an astounding R1.3 From this amount R1,1 was spent on the Family Food Parcel project.
The remaining monies raised will go towards further supporting the Thousand Herbs and Vegetable Garden as well as Keysman Nkuna’s garden who will supply vegetables to the Nourish Eco Village’s children, to further assist them with their daily feeding scheme.
Some of the local farmers from around the Hoedspruit area also kindly and generously donated fresh fruit and vegetables. We received 8 small truckloads of sweet potatoes, kale, avocados, oranges, butternuts, and spinach, all these contributions were added to the Nourish food parcels.
We also received a donation of 150 egg laying hens, these were shared between Nourish and Keysman, who both supported and contributed to the food project.
Candice Grover, Head of Community for Thornybush, would like to express her personal thanks to everyone who contributed to this project: “There are just too many donors to thank individually, but I am certainly going to try! We received donations from all over the world from both individuals and corporate companies – 210 donors in total! What an incredibly privileged position to have found ourselves in. To EVERY single person who selflessly donated, shared our story, donated their time, goods, services or energy to ensure this project was a success, I cannot thank you enough. I speak on behalf of every single one of our beneficiaries when I say, a humungous thank you!”
We would also like to make special mention of our appreciation to the Nourish team. These selfless people have tirelessly worked over this entire project period to ensure their identified families received their parcels consistently. Thank you.
In the current COVID-19 state of the world, we definitely do not claim to be heroes, unfortunately there is still so much work to be done. Our objective on inception was merely to ensure members of our community did not go to sleep hungry, and thanks to our donors we managed to achieve this for a number of families.
With a strange and largely unforeseen start to 2021 we know moving forward there will be more people in our communities needing help as this virus continues to cause chaos worldwide. However, right now, we would like to take this opportunity to wish a healthy and prosperous year to all of our beneficiaries and to you, our biggest supporters. Stay safe.