Some of you who contributed so generously to KOSRA’s Food Aid Fund may have looked at recent posts on Kenton Rotary’s Facebook page. In particular, you may have read: “The Rotary Club of Kenton on Sea is nearing the end of its third Covid 19 intervention in our local communities”. If so, you may be forgiven for wondering where your contribution has gone, if the Food Aid scheme described in the post was the initiative of Rotary with its own resources, and Spar and KOSRA were merely some kind of junior partners, with unspecified roles.

The facts are that the Food Aid scheme to Ekuphumleni was entirely a KOSRA initiative with funds raised by it. We invited Rotary to participate, and their sole participation was to make a contribution of R20 000. The entire scheme has been run by Mark Moses and his dedicated team on behalf of KOSRA. Spar has been unbelievably generous in providing all the food for the parcels at cost, making their staff available to pack the parcels in their own bags and lending KOSRA their truck to make the night deliveries in Ekuphumleni.

Mark Moses has since assisted people in Boknes, Cannon Rocks and Bushmans to start a similar initiative in Marselle and another by a Rotarian, David Howard in Alexandria. We have also received generous donations of milk, potatoes and meat from farmers, and David Howard has sourced more milk and oranges. These have all been shared with initiatives all the way from the Kat River to Alexandria.

KOSRA plans a third drop of food parcels into Ekuphumleni in about a week. Unless we drastically reduce the size of the parcels, we expect this to exhaust our remaining funds. If Level 4 only ends at the end of May, a further drop in early June may be desperately needed. If so, we may have to raise further funds.