Life in rural South Africa is not easy for millions of impoverished citizens. Rural communities often have to deal with a lack of services and shops. There are few opportunities for jobs, and many communities have to become self-sufficient to survive.
Umzinyathi in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal, is no exception. Its 500 households are plagued by unemployment and poverty. But an investment by the Eskom Development Foundation of more than R200 000 in a local bakery that was struggling to make ends meet has offered the community a ray of hope.
Bread was a scarce commodity in Umzinyathi before the revamp of the bakery, courtesy of Eskom. Although the bakery was the only bread supplier in a radius of 100km, it lacked the equipment to bake enough bread to satisfy the needs of the community. Many people standing in line for their daily loaf were turned away because the bread was finished for the day.
With the newly expanded bakery, women in the community need no longer get up at the crack of dawn to ensure their family will receive a loaf. Eskom’s donation has ensured that there is more than enough for everyone. At the same time, it has created jobs.
The bakery is run by the Abalindi Welfare Society, a non-profit organisation that was established in 1998 to empower this rural community.
It has been struggling, with limited resources, to make ends meet.
Despite its handicaps, apart from the bakery, the society runs an old age home, a children’s home, a crèche, a vegetable garden, a block-making project and a poultry farm. The old-age home accommodates 82 elderly people and the children’s centre 49 orphaned children. Many mothers searching for work day after day leave their young ones at the crèche, where they know they will be looked after and fed.
Abalindi’s bakery project is one
of the welfare society’s mainstays.
It employs 12 people: eight women, two youths and two disabled
people. The income received from the bakery is used to sustain projects that cannot generate their own funds. It also helps to pay for the society’s running costs, such as cleaning materials and the provision of basic medication.
The bakery is now in its fourth year and supplies bread to all Abalindi’s projects, as well as supermarkets, spazas and schools. Well situated on the Amatikwe main bus route in Inanda, it also draws customers from further afield, ready to buy the excess bread put up for sale after the society’s projects and local vendors have been supplied.
Before the revamp, the bakery had no excess bread to sell. The 500 loaves of bread it produced on a daily basis were simply not enough to meet local demand. The bakery
even struggled to provide the Abalindi old age and children’s homes with their share.
The bakery needed to produce more than 1 000 loaves a day ‘for the old-age home, children’s centre and crèche alone,” says Gawie Botha, the Eskom Development Foundation’s KwaZulu-Natal project manager. ‘Their old, outdated bakery equipment could only produce half of that.”
The Abalindi Welfare Society desperately needed income from the bakery to run its old-age and children’s homes. The society knew it needed an upgrade for the bakery, but the equipment would cost more than R200 000.
The Umzinyathi community could not help with donations. Even those with jobs can hardly survive on the wages they receive. So, last year, the bakery approached the foundation to help out. Eskom covered the full cost of the upgrade: R226 860. Now the bakery is producing 3 000 loaves a day — six times its previous output. With the new equipment, the bakers can produce 240 loaves an hour.
Eskom invited the bakery equipment’s supplier, Bakersmate, to come on board, and it responded
by providing valuable training
for bakery employees.
But the foundation realised that Abalindi needed more to help the rural community. In winter last year Mabel Makibelo, the foundation’s CEO, donated 100 blankets to supplement the bedding at the old-age and children’s homes.
‘More people in rural areas are still deprived of basic human needs,” Makibelo says. ‘Therefore corporate involvement in community development initiatives has become increasingly important over the years.”
She says the foundation focuses on social and economic development, particularly involving women, youth and people with disabilities. Thus Abalindi was an ideal project to get involved in.
‘The needs we addressed in
rural areas such as Umzinyathi are in capacity building, education,
arts projects, skills development
and other projects aimed at creating employment opportunities and poverty alleviation.”
The foundation is now renovating the Abalindi old-age home, which will cost R113 069. This will include painting, carpentry and tiling, as well as electrical repairs.
Eskom’s local social and economic adviser pays regular visits to the bakery project to ensure that its success continues. The foundation, which plans to remain involved in the project for another year, is preparing an impact assessment.
Botha says the project demonstrates a holistic and proactive approach because it ‘directly addresses desperate needs and
also considers economic and sustainable development”.
The judges of the Investing in
the Future Awards commended Eskom’s support for Abalindi and the fact that it was more than a
once-off contribution. They urged other corporations to replicate this kind of support for the country’s most needy communities.