Help4Nam Foodbank
Helping Namibians in need
What We Do
Money raised through your donations and our fundraising campaigns and events goes towards purchasing emergency food supplies directly from wholesalers in Namibia. The food and toiletry supplies are then prepared into an emergency food parcel which generally consists of:
A selection of non-perishable, dry food items that should be sufficient to feed a family of 6 for about 7-10 days,
Some basic toiletries such as body soap, toilet paper and toothpaste.
We liaise with our volunteers, social workers, contacts at churches, councils and schools in underprivileged communities to determine those most in need. Priority is given to households with young children and pensioners where one or more of the following is applicable to the breadwinner of that household:
Unemployment,
Disability or severe ill health,
Single parent
Nominations and referrals for food parcels are then considered, approved and issued to beneficiaries at the discretion of our volunteers and board of trustees. By operating in this way, we keep our expenditure down to allow more of the funds to go towards buying more food.
We are proud that with your support, our food parcels will go someway towards feeding these families in their time of difficulty. Having somewhere to turn to for support gives them hope and relief when they need it most !
By providing food parcels, we firmly believe that it has a positive impact on some of the socio-economic challenges that many people living in the poorer communities face. These challenges form the basis of our 4 Core Objectives:
Improving Education
by improving learning outcomes when children can concentrate better on a full stomach.
Children need nutrients for their development. Hunger and malnutrition affect a child’s ability to concentrate, to take in and retain new information and to make progress in their learning. Namibia does not offer school meals / feeding programmes to all children and many young children need to look to other sources for nutrition. Unfortunately many children often come to school hungry, having gone to bed hungry. We donate food parcels to households via primary schools, kindergartens (nurseries) and feeding schemes (‘sop kombuis’) in Windhoek and Rehoboth via our food bank network of volunteers in conjunction with the schools’ welfare departments.
2. Improving Health & Hygiene
by preventing the need for medication to be taken on an empty stomach.
The parcels we provide mainly consist of non-perishable, nutritionally balanced food- essential for those beneficiaries on strong medication for treatment such as AntiRetroviral Treatment (ART) for HIV/AIDS and other medical conditions such as Cancer and Diabetes.
We also include general hygiene products such as body soap, toothpaste and toilet paper and would like to be able to include sanitary pads more often.
3. Reducing Crime
We work toward the relief of hardship and poverty. Many children drop out of school as they feel the need to find work in order to help feed the family. Other consequences of food poverty in the home are that children feel the need to resort to illegal activities such as drug mulling, theft and sex work.
By providing food parcels we hope to reduce the pressure on these youths and substantially contribute to an increase in the chance of children staying in school to go on to obtain relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship.
4. Facilitating Employment Opportunities
The current unemployment rate in Namibia is a staggering 42% and the majority of our beneficiaries are unemployed. We aim to facilitate employment by identifying the needs of beneficiaries and connecting them with useful services and partners in our network in Namibia.
We also sponsor our volunteers and beneficiaries to attend training workshops to help empower them to develop their skills and increase their chance at securing employment.
Our objectives compliment the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:
Our Vision
We believe, in order to have the best chance of meeting the high demand for food relief, we need to be able to provide a reliable supply of food parcels within our food bank network on a more regular basis. One way to do so is to keep stock in bulk in a secure, accessible location in order to have it readily available to distribute as and when needed.
As well as setting up food donation points at schools, churches, businesses, food manufacturers, food distributors and supermarkets in Namibia, we hope to have a preferred supplier that would provide, prepare and distribute the food parcels for us.
We would also like to introduce a ‘Buy Two, Donate One’ (B2D1) initiative at supermarkets and wholesalers as part of a regular community fundraising and food drive appeal campaigns.
Please, do get in touch with us if you or your organisation may be able to help us make this vision a reality!