JOHANNESBURG - Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, South Africa’s largest food redistribution organisation, FoodForward SA, has set itself a goal of reaching one million people daily within five years as part of its vision of "a South Africa without hunger".
The food redistribution organisation currently reaches over 250,000 people every day across its national beneficiary organisation network which is supported by its logistics warehouse infrastructure that has the capacity to distribute large volumes of surplus food nationally.
"Scaling up to meet the growth challenge will involve increasing the amount of surplus food we are able to recover as well as increasing the number of beneficiary organisations we serve, while ensuring that the organisation’s infrastructure capacity is adequately expanded to accommodate this ambitious goal," FoodForward said in a statement.
FoodForward SA in 2018 launched its digital platform, FoodShare, which virtually connects beneficiary organisations directly to retail stores and food outlets for the regular collection of surplus food, thus providing greater access to food while reducing infrastructure and logistics costs.
It costs just 90c for FoodForward SA to distribute a meal’s worth of food. That means that for only R50, two people can eat every day for a month.
"Adequate nutrition is the basis for social development. FoodForward SA uses food as a catalyst for sustainable social change through its beneficiary organisations who provide at least four nutritious meals per week to vulnerable groups," FoodForward SA added.
"At least 75% of these beneficiary organisations focus on early childhood development, youth development, women’s empowerment and care for orphans and vulnerable children."