Theme: “Building a caring society through improved nutrition”
Programme Director
Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) Chairperson of the Board, Mr Jay Naidoo
All participants
Distinguishes guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I thank you for inviting me to this important forum that stimulates thoughts in search for innovative approaches to fight malnutrition.
This forum has convened to discuss one of the critical issues that must underlie our fight against poverty. The scourge of hunger, which is manifested by high levels of poverty, has found its roots in many households including households headed by women or children.
This situation has put undue pressure on families and threatens to rob children of the necessary care and healthy living they deserve. It is troubling to witness an upsurge in the number of children living in poverty, thus consuming food that lack in protein, energy and micronutrients.
But this adverse scenario is even more worrying in the light of the global economic downturn where developing nations witness poor households bearing the brunt of rising food prices. South Africa, as part of the global village, is not immune to this situation.
We believe that we have played an active role to minimise the impact of the recession on the livelihoods of the poor. In many occasions, we have emphasised that our work as a department is not only limited to the provision of social grants. Indeed, we reaffirm that the most critical part of our work is to build the capacity of communities to become self-reliant.
To date, over 13 million people access various types of social grants. Various studies have found that poor families use these social grants for children’s education, nutrition and for other basic subsistence needs. In this regard, we appreciate the role that social grants also play in the context of ensuring improved nutrition.
On this note, we believe that social grants are a temporary measure and that people need assistance to be self-reliant, including their participation in economic and job opportunities. In our endeavour to tackle child poverty government has extended the child support grant to children who previously did not qualify to receive social protection. The extension of the grant to children under 16 years of age will go a long way in addressing childhood malnutrition.
We have also introduced programmes and mechanisms aimed at improving the capacity of communities, especially women, to access nutritious food through the establishment of household food production units. These units include backyard vegetable gardens as well as community gardens and vegi-tunnels. It is our belief that the promotion of household food security will have a positive impact on our efforts to build a caring society through improved nutrition.
As part of government’s comprehensive rural development strategy, we have announced that the implementation of our household food production programme will be intensified this year. The programme has already benefited 30 024 households. Already 60 vegi-tunnels have been established in three learning sites in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and the North West Province.
The work that we do as a department to infuse the culture of self-reliance is very broad. As part of this work, we believe that our programmes and initiatives go a long way towards the alleviation of poverty and hunger, especially in poor communities and households.
We have arranged and organised our programmes in line with government’s philosophy that encourages communities to participate in their own development. This is because we believe that a community that takes a stand towards its own development will see greater sustainable progress than one that largely relies on government for development.
In this context, we have placed community development at the forefront of our plans to create sustainable livelihoods in communities, including the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
Therefore, the impact that has been made in these areas is of great value given the poverty situation in each of these provinces. Our view as government is that the food produced through all our food production initiatives must be of healthy standards, which will contribute towards the health of the poor and fight against malnutrition.
In the light of all the programmes I have highlighted, a question may arise as to how do we assist these communities? We are aware that while many households especially in rural areas have the land in their backyards or elsewhere, they need the necessary knowledge on how to create and sustain such food production units.
In the department, we do have community development practitioners who are our foot soldiers, those who are on the ground to strengthen the potential of communities in sustaining and advancing the livelihoods of the poor. We have identified these practitioners as the critical personnel towards the improvement of food security in communities, working with the affected people and community organisations on the ground.
For this reason, we undertook to develop a toolkit for community development practitioners, which we launched in February this year. This toolkit will, through a series of steps and useful suggestions, guide the practitioners through an analysis of their particular situation; examining strengths and weaknesses, defining realistic objectives and asking relevant questions to choose the best possible options for a development project.
This toolkit also duly applies to a variety of sustainable livelihoods projects. As such we are convinced that it will play an important role to help us achieve the desired outcomes in all the sustainable livelihood projects we undertake. Most importantly, the tool assists in providing the shared understanding of the sustainable livelihoods approach.
This is important because we want communities to participate in this process with a clear understanding of what must be achieved in the end. We are happy that through the Masupatsela Youth Pioneer Programme, we have been able to involve young people in sustainable livelihoods projects.
These are young people who have joined the programme as part of the National Youth Service, in the process acquiring skills in different aspects of community development, and will remain champions of development in their localities.
Working together with our community development practitioners, the young pioneers participate in government’s War on Poverty Campaign. As part of this campaign, we are targeting the poorest households in a quest to assist each of the overcome poverty.
In this regard, government officials and volunteers visit these households to examine the extent of poverty, including hunger, in each household. As a result, we are able to come up with a household-specific solution, which enables us to also address issues of hunger and malnutrition in poor households whenever such incidents are detected.
Programme Director
Instead of merely providing relief to the poor, we are helping them tackle poverty, including the important matter of nutrition we are talking about here today. We are delighted that government has increased allocation to programmes such as the Early Childhood Development (ECD) and school nutrition programme in a quest to end child poverty in our country.
This is very important step that seeks to reduce hunger among school learners and to alleviate the effect of malnutrition in their learning capacity. We love our children and all efforts must be channelled towards protecting them from hunger and encouraging them to complete their education.
As a department, we continuously strive to ensure that the poor and vulnerable members of our society have access to balanced diet through ECD, drop-in centres and home community based Care (HCBC) programmes. But all our efforts require concrete partnerships for us to yield the desired outcomes. We have entered into an agreement with the FoodBank South Africa, a non-governmental organisation to establish a network of community food banks to feed the hungry in our communities.
To date, at least four community food banks have been established in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban. These facilities receive, store and sort food, which is later issued to local food distribution agencies. Each food bank acts on behalf of various social services agencies and procure food which is mainly donated by food and grocery industries, different organisations and individuals. We plan to have a network of village food banks in all our provinces.
Programme Director
We are working with the National Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS (NAPWA) to broaden access to improved nutrition in so far as those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS are concerned, including orphans and vulnerable children. This is one of the initiatives that have especially been rolled-out through the HCBC programme.
As such the issues of access to nutrition and food security are addressed comprehensively including through the provision of agricultural starter packs, food relief and the promotion of sustainable livelihoods as well as creation of employment opportunities.
All our interventions have taken into account the causes of malnutrition such as poor health, intake of unhealthy food, unhealthy environment as well as lack of access to clean water and among others.
These efforts are advanced in the context of meeting our objectives to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty by 2015. We are convinced that through partnerships with various non-governmental organisations, churches, business and civil society, these objectives will be achieved.
But all our efforts will not bear any fruit if the people themselves do not join us in partnership in the process of helping them out of poverty. It is quite clear that we still have a long way to go to deal with poverty, but we believe that working together in partnerships, we can achieve greater successes.
Once again, I would like to express my appreciation to GAIN for inviting us to this important forum. I am certain that the inputs made by the various speakers will go a long way in helping us fight malnutrition in society.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Social Development
30 March 2010
