The Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) provides food help to schools on the West Coast to a tune of R700, 000.
According to SA Good News, R737 000 was contributed to feed students for a full year (2024), and more than a thousand children would profit from this kind gesture.
Major employer in the area, the Oceana Group, along with longstanding partner PSFA, gave to students at the HP Williams and EJ Malgarte elementary schools in St Helena Bay, as well as Masiphathisane elementary School and Louwville High School in Vredenburg.
On the organization’s website, it is stated that the organisation was founded in 1958 following the government’s cancellation of the national school feeding program at that time.
The Rotary Club of Paarden Eiland (now the Rotary Club of Table Bay) organized a public meeting and created the organisation on March 10, 1958, citing its awareness of the need for school food.
In addition to early childhood development centers (ECDs), technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVETS), and orphaned and vulnerable children centers (OVCs), PSFA is a registered non-profit organization that works exclusively in the Western Cape province of South Africa to alleviate hunger among young learners and students attending primary, secondary, and special needs schools.
The organisation stated that its primary goals were to raise school attendance, improve children’s capacity to study through school nutrition, and decrease temporary hunger.
It’s often known that you can’t teach a hungry child, and Stats SA estimates that almost 8 million children in South Africa go to bed hungry, according to Petrina Pakoe, director of the Peninsula School Feeding Association.
“The lunches we serve as the primary source of nutrition for a large number of students in the schools we support throughout the day.”
Children who take meals from school feeding programs are frequently stigmatised and would prefer to go hungry than face bullying, according to a PSFA study.
“We’ve made an effort to eradicate that by expanding the program to include everyone, as we discovered that everyone is in need, albeit to varying degrees,” she stated.
Furthermore, Oceana has updated the eating space and given brand-new kitchens to two of the schools.
This year, Oceana intends to donate another kitchen to EJ Malgarte
Editor’s note: The organisation stated that its primary goals were to raise school attendance, improve children’s capacity to study through school nutrition, and decrease temporary hunger.
Description: The Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) provides food help to schools on the West Coast. Over R700, 000 was donated to the schools to ensure children have food at school this year.
Editor: Thato Mahlangu
Project manager: Do4SA