South Africa

Food Donations

WARMTH

Children participating in the WARMTH programme

It has been reported that only about 10% of people in the world who die from hunger are victims of famine. The other 90% die from less visible forms of malnutrition: diarrhoea, stunting and wasting. If people do not eat healthily, they are much more likely to succumb to HIV, tuberculosis or other diseases. These conditions are common in the informal settlements in South Africa, where the levels of hunger and disease are dangerously high.
Support in the Western Cape
WARMTH is a community-based feeding scheme aimed at relieving hunger and malnutrition, promoting good nutrition and health education, and stimulating development. WARMTH runs 50 community kitchens in the poverty-stricken areas of the Cape Peninsula, where over 14000 low-cost, nutritionally-balanced meals are served daily. The kitchens are run as small businesses by community members who offer food to the needy. Through clinics that are run alongside the kitchens, the project also provides education about nutrition and health issues, including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
Long term partnership
Nestlé’s partnership with WARMTH began in 1993 when Poppie Huna, the founder of the Cape Town based Community Kitchen Network, the precursor to WARMTH, was awarded the first Nestlé Community Nutrition Award. The project is aligned with one of Nestlé’s objectives, namely, to address malnutrition and hunger, thus contributing to poverty reduction.
The project began as a conventional soup kitchen where soup was handed out free-of-charge to children in poor communities. As “hand-outs” create dependency and diminish human dignity, WARMTH changed its policy to enable people to buy nutritious “take-aways” at a minimal cost. In this way the stigma of poverty is overcome, the dignity of the individual is upheld, the problem of malnutrition is addressed, entrepreneurs are developed and the kitchen operator earns an income. The vision of WARMTH is that “no child in Cape Town need go to bed hungry”, and its kitchens provide meals for as little as 6 US cents and a cup of soup for 2 US cents.