The first GFC was started many years ago by Liesl Stewart and Abigail Fehrsen. For quite some years now the Mowbray and Rondebosch GFC members have donated money to buy ethical food for the Community Dinners which are held at St Peters in Mowbray every Thursday evening. They are now at the point where they collect R3000-R4000 per month for this incredible outreach.
Through these Community Dinners (and the volunteers who serve there), some of the guests who live on the street have had the opportunity to go to a rehab centre in the Northern Cape called Inner Peace. These opportunities are facilitated by Richard Bolland, one of the founding volunteers of the dinner, and founder of NEW HOPE, an NGO helping people into shelters, rehabilitation, job readiness and health care. When they come back to CPT they are often faced with the challenges of living drug and alcohol free as there is little to no ongoing support. New Hope and Inner Peace decided to work together to open a second phase rehab in Cape Town in the suburb of Observatory.
I know Rich personally and am a regular volunteer at the Thursday night dinners. I am very excited to invite you, our members, to join in supporting this much-needed facility. We will also be partnering with the Newlands Good Food Club and combining our donations.
We asked Rich to explain a bit more to us what they do and what their needs are. He had this to say:
“New Hope has partnered with Inner Peace, a private inpatient rehab facility that focuses on treating substance use disorders in a long-term sustainable way – allowing for both physical, mental and emotional healing to take place. This is costly and can cost around R20,000 – R30,000 for someone to be in a program for 6 months. Food is the biggest cost and therefore subsidizing the food costs allows New Hope to place more people into Inner Peace’s program. Ladles of Love have already agreed to donate vegetables and highly nutritious maize meal to Inner Peace, and Soul Donations have agreed to start a toiletries campaign to help subsidize those costs. The current gaps are most likely meat, eggs, bread, cheese, diary & grains. Hopefully Good Food Club can help fill this gap”.
Filling the gap is exactly what we’d like to invite you to do. From August, both the Pinelands and Newlands GFCs will be offering you the opportunity to add a donation to Inner Peace Observatory to your basket. Rich said they budget R50 pppd for food & beverages. You will have the opportunity to include this in your order in multiples of 50. Debbie and I will use the money donated to buy food from our suppliers to donate to Inner Peace on a monthly basis.
Thank you for giving generously and spreading the good food love a little further.