Jam – serves up more than bowls of porridge
HONEYDEW – JAM wants the best for children's health and education.
Volunteers arrived from all over the world to assist the African-founded international humanitarian organisation, Joint Aid Management (Jam),achieve its vision of eradicating starvation in Africa.
In the three decades since its inception, Jam, has dished up over 1.6 billion meals to children in need and has completed more than 120 makeovers on early childhood development centres in multiple informal settlements in South Africa.
The food that Jam serves at schools every day is a porridge, scientifically formulated by Jam itself, served in bright red bowls. The porridge is a precooked blend of milled, heat-treated corn and soybeans that are fortified with a vitamin and mineral premix. Each meal contains 75 percent of a child’s daily requirements of macro and micro-nutrients.
“We’ve seen children who are old enough to enter primary school but aren’t able to recognise more than three letters of the alphabet,” said Jam managing director, David Brown. “Malnutrition, and eventually stunting, means that children cannot learn as they should; they cannot think as they should; they cannot even play as they should and you can even see the dullness in their eyes,” said Brown.
It was Nelson Mandela himself who said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” In order to break the cycle of poverty and to ensure that children have a solid foundation in life, they need a safe and stimulating learning environment. This is where the school makeovers come in.
This year, as part of its Mandela Day activities and with the support of its sponsors, Spur, Marsh and Google, Jam’s volunteers in Honeydew have painted walls in splashes of vibrant colours, installed soft, artificial grass, given out toys and held parties at several early childhood development centres in Diepsloot and Nooitgedacht. While in Bryanston, the Add Hope – KFC team packed food boxes for Jam to distribute to families in need.
“It’s such a gift to see how deeply a day like Mandela Day can transform people; those who receive the help and those who reach out and extend help, truly shows people why every day should be like this,” said Brown.
That’s why Jam has found a way to feed a child a day for just R1.
“With your support, with your monthly pledge of just R30, we can make every day a Mandela Day,” Brown added.
Details: Jam, 011 548 3900.
