Meals on Wheels serves pupils breakfast

There was a jovial mood at Hopolang Combined School in Khayelitsha at J section when Meals on Wheels and various stakeholders provided breakfast to pupils on Tuesday, May 27.

Western Cape area director of Meals on Wheels Community Services, Jeremy Vlotman, said such programmes help them to show the donors the plight of food security in various communities.

He said the idea is for them to understand where their donation goes and provide them with an opportunity to interact with the community they serve.

He said they first provided about 80 senior citizens with breakfast, and then served over 800 pupils at the school.

"When you look at the economic circumstances, you can see that families are starting to struggle. At the very beginning we once served the community which was classified as poor but in these days but we have seen that there has been a huge increase of our people coming through to benefit from our programme who come from formal and informal houses," he said.

According to director of corporate affairs at Pepsico South Africa, Nico Moloto, children can't perform to their full potential if they attend school on an empty stomach.

He said the feeding programme does not only address the issues of hunger, it also serves as an incentive for school attendance.

"We believe that as a food manufacturing company what we are doing is the right thing to do. We want to expand as the company grows. We have faced many challenges ranging from a school not having the right food storage and safety and security concerns. However, we are solution-driven and such challenges have not stopped us," he said.

Principal Bernard Thabo Mokhanya said he was grateful for the support.