Victoria Falls Community Programme Serves up 50,000 Children's meals

With virtually the entire town of Victoria Falls out of work due to the collapse of tourism, and with no source of income to support their families, children are bearing the brunt of run-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our community. Most are not getting more than one small bowl of maize porridge or bread a day. 

Utilising seven churches and school locations across Chinotimba and Mkhosana, the Children’s Feeding Programme, organised by the Pastoral Counselling and Community Support Group and the Victoria Falls Covid-19 Taskforce, aims to supply one meal per day, Monday to Friday for school-age children in the region. It is estimated that there are approximately 8,000 children enrolled in different schools across Victoria Falls.

Launched on 14th July, the first day of the program opened with two community kitchens serving over 400 children, and one week later all seven community kitchens were operational, with a total of 14,314 meals served over the first 7 days of the programme.

By the second week of the Programme over 4,000 meals were being served each day, and by the 13th day a total of over 40,000 meals had been served by the Programme through its seven community kitchens - reaching a landmark total of 50,000 meals on the 16th day.

The Pastors Counselling and Community Support Group has been central to the introduction of this programme. This group is made up of representatives from the Union for the Development of Apostolic Churches in Zimbabwe Africa (UDACIZA), the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), and Victoria Falls Ministers Fraternity among others and is open to all Christian affiliations.

Hundreds of face masks have also been distributed to the children through the kitchens, which also gave the pastors an opportunity to take temperatures and assess the health of each child.

The programme is the result of huge efforts on the ground as businesses and communities have joined forces to establish and then scale up this huge operation. Hotels and lodges have donated perishables including vegetables and salads from their kitchen gardens, national and regional companies and businesses donated other food supplies, allowing provision of nutritiously balanced meals. Local restaurants have enrolled their staff to help prepare ingredients and tourism operators have provided supporting storage and transport logistics.

Grateful thanks to the amazing individuals making all this happen on the ground, including Gail van Jaarsveldt, Dani Connolly and Christie Brookstein from the Jafuta Foundation, Chef Russell from Shearwater Adventures, Brian Nyamande and the Pastor’s group who have worked tirelessly to set up this programme.

Gail van Jaarsveldt of the Jafuta Foundation is leading fundraising efforts to support this much needed programme: "We are appealing for those of you that can, to please join hands with us to help in anyway that you can so that our children’s Food Kitchens will continue for as long as we are able, or for as long as they are necessary until international aid reaches us. It costs us 25c to give one child a nutritious meal, once a day."

It has been estimated that more than three quarters of workers in Victoria Falls have been unemployed for more than three months after the implementation of the tourism close-down at the end of March. A significant portion of those retained by the industry are on reduced hours and pay.

For more information - www.victoriafallsappeal.com

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