The University of Cape Town’s feeding scheme is in dire need of funding to continue making daily lunches for poor students.
The scheme serves 600 lunches to students faced with financial difficulties. The institution says the situation is worsened by the failures of the student fund, NSFAS.
Catering coordinator Judy Rumble says, “Well our service provider C3 supplies us. They sponsor all the products for us for the last few months starting in January this year up until the 12th April. We receive daily deliveries of all our products. To ascertain numbers, you looking at roughly a 160 loaves of bread per day, cheese you looking at 20kg’s of cheese per day, 20 kilo’s juices and fruit 600 units each per day.”
“We run out every day. The demand is pretty high. We are not able to sustain, right now there’s more demand than supply at the moment. There’s no wastage.”
A volunteer who works for the University of Cape Town’s feeding scheme says her personal experiences with her hungry children led her to donate her time to the cause.
Yolanda Mgidi says she uses her own money to travel from Khayelitsha to prepare 600 lunches for poor students.
Mgidi says her children attended the same university.
“It’s not only a matter of providing food when you can’t by helping because when I went from a shift one day and I went to the Mowbry bus terminus I found some students with the packets and they told me how much they appreciate and they had also some ideas what we could do in the future.”
