2016: What a year!

This year has been a time of exponential growth, tough challenges, our faith been tested and of course, many lives been changed. In 2016 alone we’ve been able to impact the lives of over 5000 individuals on a daily basis. During our journey we’ve seen 3 key areas being highlighted:

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1. Increasing our areas of influence

A big cause for celebration has been The Domino Foundation moving from being a North Durban NPO to a nationwide NPO.

We’re excited to announce that The Domino Foundation’s areas of influence now include: Waterloo, Oshebni, Amanzimtoti, Inner city Durban and Cape Town. We’ve also continued to strengthen our existing relationships with donors, volunteers, NPOS and governmental departments like the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Social Development and the National Prosecuting Authority.

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2.Partnering with local churches

We have loved partnering with other churches to outwork their social justice initiatives.

This year we’ve partnered with Glenridge (Durban Inner City) and The Rock (Umhlanga) through the outworking of the Red light Anti-Human Trafficking programme; Life Changers (Tableview, Cape Town) for the Recycle Swop Shop and Kingsway Church International (Amanzimtoti) to open another sandwich kitchen. As we’ve been able to share our experience, skills, knowledge and feeding expertise we’ve seen an incredible growth in the Amanzimtoti Sandwich Kitchen. In just eight months the kitchen has grown to preparing 660 sandwiches a week – an incredible growth rate!

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3.Beneficiary Impact

We started the year with four programmes and expanded to seven community transformational initiatives.

Babies’ Homes – We provided a loving, family environment for 15 children in our two transitional homes with 6 babies being adopted into their ‘forever homes’.

Life Skills Programme– We worked with 4 under-resourced primary schools and 726 children on a weekly basis through lessons, one-on-one counselling sessions and after school activities – all aiming to empower learners to make wise life choices.

ECD Programme– We started the year upskilling and transforming 23 crèches into sustainable small businesses and places of active learning and increased to 44 establishments by year-end. Our work in the ECD space ensures that over children are receiving quality foundation-phase development throughout KZN.

Feeding Programme– We opened an additional kitchen to feed the south Durban basin, as well as added an additional 17 establishments (a combination of crèches/kindergartens and primary schools) to our feeding programme across KZN. By the year-end we were feeding a total of 55 establishments and averaging an incredible 98 000 meals a month!

Red light Anti-Human Trafficking – This programme joined Domino in 2016 and in 2017 we look forward to welcoming 8 ladies into our programme where they’ll be assisted, cared for, restored and released.

Recycle Swop Shops – The social justice and environmental programme joined Domino in 2016 with three swop shops operating in the Western Cape.

Bursary Programme – In 2017 the programme will fund 5 students’ tertiary education, giving them the opportunity to build themselves a future through education.

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Thanks to donors and volunteers, your support has enabled us to continue changing thousands of lives through showing mercy, combatting injustice and empowering individuals throughout our beautiful country of South Africa. If you would like to partner with us for 2017 please let us know.

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Stories from the kitchen: 3rd Quarter 2016

Premier Foods delivering our bread. Our contract just got renewed for the next year and Toti got their first official bread delivery from them in Spetember.

This past month The Domino Foundation reached a MASSIVE milestone, preparing and delivering 90 000 meals for the hungry in our community!

Thanks to the generosity of local business, schools, and individuals we’re able to impact so many children and adults monthly, an incredible opportunity to impact lives. Our Sandwich Kitchen based in Durban North prepares and delivers on average 4 700 sandwiches per week to a number of hospitals and church ministries and Durban schools where learners don’t have a packed lunch. This number doesn’t include sandwiches, which get donated from Danville Park Girls High School, Our Lady of Fatima and Maris Stella School and Bread Buddies.

Our Toti kitchen, run in partnership with Kingsway Church International, has grown in leaps and since it opened in April bounds thanks to the support of the local community. Almost 6 000 sandwiches have been distributed averaging 350 a week since the opening. These sarmies go to two schools and one crèche.

Recently the Grade 8’s and 9’s of Embury College became more aware of the plight of some of our hungry children and delivered peanut butter and mayonnaise and then made 200 sandwiches. The Toti Kitchen has also given out 30 relief packs to families in crisis in the area and is helping to deliver JAM porridge to two crèches in the Ezimbokindweni area.

Thank you to everyone who has a heart for feeding and contributes – your support, donations and volunteer time is impacting lives. Just ask the teacher from Doon Heights Primary!

 

 

Stories from the Kitchen: 2nd Quarter 2016

The Feeding Programme has been exceptionally busy over the last few months, an exciting sign in realising our vision of communities where no child is to hungry to concentrate or learn. This is especially important as more and more families battle to provide enough nutritious meals in South Africa’s growing food crisis which has been further negatively affected by the weakening rand. Simply, families cannot afford to buy food and if they do it’s too little or not nearly nutritious enough.

In light of this the Domino Foundation bought attention to World Hunger Day through the “Fight the Plight” initiative, raising funds for our feeding programmes that distribute over 3500 meals every school day through our two sandwich kitchens (Durban and Toti) and our soup Kitchen in Brookdale. Our Relief Kitchen provides relief hampers and meals to families in crisis.

The month of May also saw the exciting launch of the Sandwich Kitchen in Amanzimtoti in partnership with Kingsway Church International. Working closely with local schools to identify the most vulnerable learners the Toti Sandwich provides delicious sandwiches to these schoolchildren who don’t have a packed lunch. The Toti Feeding Kitchen is currently making and delivering 30 sandwiches to each of the three participating schools daily with hopes to expand the programme soon.

Just to get a snapshot of how massive and far reaching the feeding programme is,  for the month of May alone 78 640 meals were prepared and delivered to vulnerable communities of Durban and 600 sandwiches were prepared and delivered from Toti. The Feeding Programme has also welcomed three new Amaoti creches totalling 50 more kids and is about to start training four new schools in the Point area – Pickering Street, Winder Street and Point Rd (Mahatma Ghandi Rd). Children from these schools will receive JAM porridge daily.

If you have a heart for feeding and want to know more about our programme and how to get involved have a look at our detailed and informative #KnowYourNPO posts on #Feeding. We’d love to have you!

New season, new roles

With a new season comes new leadership. As the Domino Foundation increases its capacity to reach more communities there have been some internal shifts to ensure that the hands who do this work are passionate, skilled and ready to impact lives.

At the beginning of the year Mickey Wilkins stepped down as CEO of the Domino Foundation. After twelve incredible years of leading the non-profit Mickey has now decided to look after the sustainability of Domino and has started Domino Business. As of February 2016 the Domino Foundation welcomed in a new CEO, Richard Mun-Gavin, lead pastor of Cogs Church. Not only does Richard bring a wealth of pastoral experience but his passion for people means he’s more than ready to take Domino into a new season of growth.

Shaun Tait has officially moved into the role of  COO and is overseeing the day to day operations of all the programmes and its staff. Although a tall task Shaun has slid into his role with effort and ease.

After heading up the ECD team since its inception Toni Wilkins has decided to focus her attentions on the Life Skills programme and counselling at the Door of Hope Counselling Centre. The team is now been led by the capable Jessica King, who moved over from donor relations. Jessica is more than qualified for the position and brings her unique learnings from her studies, a Bachelor of Social Science in Organisational Psychology and Industrial Sociology and a Foundation Phase Teaching qualification and is currently Clinical Psychology. Jessica also handles the Domino volunteers.

And in the feeding programme Cathy Whittle has taken over the reigns as Programme Manager. Cathy comes from the cooking industry and has the heaps of experience needed to steer the many Domino feeding projects in the right direction. In case you’ve forgotten, that’s our Sandwich Kitchen, Soup Kitchen and Relief Kitchen. Past Project Manager, Brenda Scheepers has moved onto an exciting venture with Domino Business, which you can read more about here.

#KnowYourNPO – Feeding

As part of the Domino Foundation’s #KnowYourNPO campaign we’re unpacking each of our programmes and this we’re shining a light on our FEEDING programme.

#1 Our two Sandwich Kitchens, Soup Kitchen and Relief Kitchen serve close to 4 500 hearty meals every day to vulnerable children in the greater Durban area, making sure they’re never too hungry to concentrate or learn. Altogether 33 crèches, 10 schools, 2 health institutions and one church are part of the feeding programme.

#2 Whether it be in a crèche, school or a family in crisis our goal is to serve up delicious and nutritious meals to those who need it most.

• Our passionate Soup Kitchen staff prepare porridge and soup that’s delivered to local crèches as well as TAFTA, Happy Hours Mental Health School, the Amaoti clinic and holiday clubs.
• Our Sandwich Kitchen prepares and distributes egg mayonnaise, peanut butter and polony sandwiches to vulnerable school children weekly.
• Our Relief Kitchen prepares scrumptious meals for families that are going through tough times. These families or individuals are brought to our attention through our other programmes or the Door of Hope Counseling Centre.

#3 Last year our amazing volunteers made 166 740 sandwiches and our 6 incredible Brookdale staff prepared 642 688 porridge and soup meals. Now that’s a lot of food!

#4 We all respond differently in crisis situations. During last year’s refugee crisis our Brookdale Soup Kitchen rose to the occasion, preparing an incredible 41 900 meals during the first week of the xenophobic attacks. The Relief Kitchen is always in need of ingredients to prepare meals tinned food, long life milk, cereals, tea, coffee, jam, sugar- if you can help let us know!

#5 Have you wondered how our feeding programme works? Well here’s all you need to know about it!

#6 Our two Sandwich Kitchens run on the generosity of our volunteers – their hands prepare the sandwiches that get delivered to many schools around the area! If you would like to join the enthusiastic team email volunteer@domino.org.za

#7 The reality is that the more donations we receive, the more young lives we can impact. It’s never been easier to donate than with using Zapper! Scan the Zapper South Africa QR code with your phone/tablet and donate to our feeding programme.

The month of MAY is synonymous with hunger

Did you know that an estimated that 10.7 million South African’s live on or below the food poverty line of *R11 per day? That’s R11 to spend on 3 meals or a more realistic occurrence, R11 to spend on one meal every single day.

Another statistic points out that **one in four South Africans suffer from hunger on a regular basis and more than half of the population are on the borderline of being hungry. Even though South Africa is a food secure nation unemployment, rising food prices, climate change and poor access to nutritious food means that a quarter of our population are vulnerable to hunger – a horrifying and shocking thought. To cope vulnerable households skip meals, cut meal sizes, buy cheap food that is expired or not nutritious or rely on food parcels and social grants that are never enough. Malnutrition, stunting and difficulty concentrating are just some of the gloomy affects of hunger. And that’s not even taking into account the heartbreaking feeling of being unable to feed your family or having the energy to succeed in school or work. Simply, hunger crushes the human spirit.

That’s why Domino is committed to supporting individuals rise above the line, every day. Our feeding programmes distribute over 3 500 meals every school day. But we need your help to increase this number and fight global poverty. 
With
 International World Hunger Day on May 28 we want to bring awareness around the plight of poverty that many face around the world, especially for our neighbors.

We need your help. To support our feeding programmes head on over to our donations page and help end hunger for good.

*Statistics South Africa, 2015

** Oxfam: https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats

 

Feeding Effects 3rd Quarter 2015

The Domino Foundation dreams of a community that is full of life. To be able to do this we help fulfill the basic need of food – providing hearty meals to the vulnerable.

We feed a number of crèches, schools, churches, counselling centres, aftercare programmes and youth holiday clubs through our feeding programmes in the Amaoti community. The forty Sandwich Kitchen volunteers prepare around 4 740 nutritious sandwiches per week that are delivered to seven schools, the Boys & Girls Club, child headed households, local church outreaches & Amaoti youth meetings. In just the past five months our fully equipped industrial Soup Kitchen has prepared and delivered an incredible 8 200 meals of nutritious soup to 34 crèches in Amaoti. Our Relief Kitchen provides meals to families in crisis and our Vegetable Tunnels cultivate produce that is harvested and ploughed into either the soup kitchen or sold to the local community and corporates.

The Vegetable tunnels have welcomed a new face into the programme, Ross Eigenmann, as programme manager of the tunnels. His first few weeks have seen him clearing the site of general refuse to make space for the new gardens and tunnels. Ross is already looking at the future of the programme and searching for new possible sites to expand and negotiating with a food distributor to supply various restaurants and hotels in the future when our output is steady.

To continue to impact as many people as we can the Relief Kitchen is looking for key ingredients to pack their relief parcels. If you are able to donate these crucial items, let us know!

1 x 1kg of rice

1 x 2,5kg of maize

1 x 500g of sugar

1 x 100 bags of tea

4 x 410g of tinned baked beans

2 x 400g of soy mince

4 x 425g of tinned sardines

2 x 500g of salt

Feeding Effects June/ July 2015

The Domino Foundation’s feeding programme continues to grow in both strength and numbers this year, an incredible achievement by the team and the many donors and volunteers who pour out their time and resources into this programme.

Sandwich Kitchen
With a vision to feed the hungry in their most desperate time of need forty volunteers prepare around 948 nutritious sandwiches per day. These are then lovingly packed up and delivered to seven schools in the North Durban area and DMC and King George Hospital. All these sandwiches would not be possible without generous regular donations from Premier foods, Eggbert Eggs, Unilver and UJW. Danville, St Barnabas and Fatima also donate made up sandwiches and fruit in varying amounts that are distributed weekly to Isibonginhlanhla Primary in Waterloo once a week, a new avenue of the sandwich project. The Sandwich Kitchen is still desperately trying to secure a regular donor for mayonnaise and peanut butter.

Soup Kitchen

The Brookdale Soup Kitchen provides nutritious meals to children at crèches during the week, encouraging attendance and assisting children in reaching their developmental milestones. Regular food donations from Container Ministries, Stop Hunger Now, JAM and sporadic donations from businesses like Ellis Park Butchery and Imana Soya feed the kiddies hungry bellies. For the first time ever, the Soup Kitchen was able to send home food parcels with the children for the holidays. Each child received two sachets of Stop Hunger now, which consisted of six portions of rice, dehydrated veggies and soy. That is a total of 21 000 meals in addition to our regular feeding, an amazing feat.

Relief Kitchen

The Xenophobic crisis unexpectedly jumpstarted the Relief Kitchen, an incredible 41 900 meals were made in the 1^st week. Since the xenophobic attacks volunteer groups from both schools and corporates have helped pack food parcels (costing R200) for the relief kitchen. These parcels are then distributed to families in Amaoti, the Durban north area, Verulam and Waterloo. Frozen meals are also prepared by school groups and by volunteer Jenny Kitching.

Vegetable Tunnels

The Domino Foundation’s flourishing vegetable tunnels are creating employment opportunities and providing a much-needed food source for the Brookdale Feeding Kitchen. Veggies are harvested and ploughed into either the soup kitchen or sold to the local community and corpoates.

Feeding Effect 11/14

The Feeding Programme has had an incredible year overall, from AMAZING donations, community support and thousands fed daily!

 

The Domino Foundation Feeding Programme reaches the needy in communities and fulfils our Christian mandate of feeding the hungry. We support crèches, schools, churches, counselling centres, aftercare programmes, and youth holiday clubs. Our activities include but are not limited to:

• Crèche Feeding Project
• School Sandwich Project
• Food Parcels for families in crisis
• Monitoring and Evaluation

Overall, daily we feed 2264 individuals daily porridge, soup or sandwiches. That’s 2264 children (and some adults) who have the nutrition they need to be productive and empowered for the day.

We’d like to thank and honour all the incredible staff and volunteers who have worked and served in our two kitchens (the sandwich kitchen in Durban North and the soup kitchen in Brookdale.) Their hard work and selflessness has allowed us to feed the hungry in their most desperate time of need and move closer to realising our dream of communities where no child is too hungry to concentrate and learn.

Farewell Sheila!

At our annual Sandwich Kitchen Christmas Tea Party, we bid farewell to the wonderful leader of our sandwich kitchen, Sheila Simpkins. For 2 years, she served in the kitchen, lead the volunteers and managed the way it was so excellently run. We wish her luck on this new season in her life, and thank her for all her amazing work!

The Annual Sandwich Kitchen Christmas Party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more from our November Domino Effects Newsletter:

Babies Home Effect

ECD Effect

Life Skills Effect

Literacy Effect

General Overview

 

The Hope Market: Domino’s Veggie Tale.

On the 1st of November a Christmas Hope Market was held at Grace Family Church. This is a non-profit, community development initiative that seeks to offer opportunities to emerging business men and women to generate income and learn from the basic business experience of selling their home-made, hand-made or crafted products.

We were invited to take along some of the awesome produce from our Vegetable Tunnels in Brookdale and sell them to raise funds for the running of this project that has just been more and more fruitful.

This year, the stalls were encouraged to bring a poster sharing their story and message. Domino’s ‘Veggie Tale’ is easy. Our vegetables go to Fresh Produce Wholesalers who buy it from us OR (and mostly) to our Soup Kitchen. These veggies are either sold to bring funds back to enable the running of the kitchen or used in delicious soups that feed thousands daily!

The market was an amazing success – it was well attended and earned us some awesome exposure. People became interested in our story and we sold out all of our produce! We love the constant support we are given by the community and look forward to more fun days like this ahead!