February is the month of love and what better way to open our hearts than to contribute to the Ladles of Love ‘Love Food’ campaign that kicks off this month and continues until the end of March.

Sadly, small children living in impoverished communities are battling hunger every day. The impact of unemployed parents means there is no food at home, and certainly no money for toys. The results is, a lack of stimulation and social engagement and these factors, together with malnutrition can cause stunted growth and cognitive development issues.

The Ladles of Love ‘Nourish Our Children’ programme for 2023 supports Educare Centres by understanding the financial and psychological challenges they face daily, with children arriving at school starving and unable to focus or learn, let alone play.

“Our LOVE FOOD campaign will drive fundraising and create awareness allowing us to provide 40 Educare Centres with highly nutritious food, recipes, and meal plans to serve 4000 small children. We will train and enable the Centre’s cooks to prepare Love Food for children, which is highly nutritious, delicious food served with ladles of love!

Then to strengthen small children’s eye-hand co-ordination and physical development plus encourage  them to play, we will be giving every child a bright, colourful, bouncing ball to personalise and call their own”, explains Founder and Director, Ladles of Love, Danny Diliberto.

They are reaching out to organisations, companies, brands, and individuals to get involved by sponsoring a child two healthy meals a day for a month and a ball to play at R250 or R3000 per child per year.

By alleviating hunger in our small children during early childhood development, we are investing in building a healthy nation of future leaders.

Their big goal is to sponsor all 4000 children by selling vouchers from their online shop at www.ladlesoflove.org.za.  

As a PBO, Ladles of Love is qualified to issue section 18A Tax certificates to all Individuals and companies sponsoring children to assist in reaching their goal.

For more information follow Ladles of Love on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter.

For media queries contact Candice Jansen on email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

-- ENDS --

Issued by: Heads Up Communications
On behalf of Ladles of Love

Editor’s Notes:

Ladles of Love
Ladles of Love is a non-profit organisation which aims to provide meals to people living in abject poverty across the Cape Peninsula and Gauteng. The project is the brainchild of Danny Diliberto, who started his first soup kitchen in 2014 serving hundreds of homeless people in Cape Town nutritious meals every week. During the Covid-pandemic the organisation grew exponentially, to be one of the largest non-profit providers of food relief in South Africa, serving impoverished communities via a network of 200 soup kitchens.  Since March 2020 Ladles of Love has procured and provided food to serve over 34.5 million meals and continues to feed 35,000 people a day, relying solely on funding and donations.

To sustain the organisation, they run campaigns like the Sarmiethon where volunteers and sponsors can engage to do good for good by making sandwiches to pay forward. On Mandela Day they smashed their third World Record, this time it was for ‘the world’s largest food can mosaic’ raising funds and 112,500 cans of food.

Statistics

• 30 million people in SA are food insecure
• An estimated 2.5 million adults and 600 000 children in South Africa are starving every day or almost every day
• Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, by December 2020, child hunger had increased by 50% in SA and children were also more depressed.
• In the third quarter of 2022, the unemployment rate in SA reached 27,9% among workers aged 35 – 44 years.

 

Source: Heart & Stroke Foundation webinar

 

Source: Heart & Stroke Foundation webinar