The Tiger Brands Foundation’s in-school nutrition programme has become an important part of women’s economic empowerment in disadvantaged areas around the country.
Director of The Tiger Brands Foundation, Eugene Absolom, says that more than 430 food handlers are receiving an opportunity to contribute to their communities through one of the country’s oldest and furthest-reaching in-school breakfast programmes.
Absolom says these food-handlers are making a living and also participating in a national effort to end food insecurity.: “The majority of these food-handlers are women,” he says.
An extensive network
The Foundation established a network of school-based food-handling facilities, each at a cost of about R500 000, to prepare hot breakfast for learners every school day.
A great deal of this food preparation process is handled by women drawn from communities that have schools participating in the breakfast programme.
Addressing the plight of black rural women
In a report titled “Women and Poverty: The South African Experience“, published in the International Journal of Women’s Studies, Johanna Kehler, affirms that poor black women’s access to resources, opportunities, education, growth, and wealth is severely limited.
“Black rural women are the ones faced with an even greater lack of access to resources and prosperity and therefore live under immense poverty,” Kehler’s report states.
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A regular income
The Foundation’s breakfast programme reaches more than 100 schools across the country. In each school food-handlers, who have received SAQA-accredited training, now receive regular income.
The Foundation, which provides a hot nutritious breakfast meal to more than 75 000 learners across the country, was established to bring about positive socio-economic impact in underprivileged areas in South Africa.
He says the Foundation developed a model to meet its primary mandate, which continues to be reviewed periodically in consultation with key stakeholders, to ensure that it is still living up to its strategic intent.
The strategic goal
“We continue to appeal to other organisations to join the effort to end food insecurity while also participating in the development of previously disadvantaged communities.”
“Drawing our dedicated teams of food-handlers from the communities, where we offer breakfast to the learners was a deliberate act in line with our strategic goal,” says Absolom. He explains that the goal is to make sure that the Tiger Brand Foundation’s presence in these communities is felt not only through ending food insecurity for the learners but by also injecting some much-needed financial resources.
“The latest review of our broad-based socio-economic impact in communities has indeed given us something to be cheerful about,” says Absolom.
“However, relative to the magnitude of the challenge we face as a country, our contribution is a small step forward.
“We continue to appeal to other organisations to join the effort to end food insecurity while also participating in the development of previously disadvantaged communities.”
