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About The People’s Pantry
In 2020, the Makers Valley Partnership(MVP) managed and incubated a community recycling and surplus-based swop shop. The initiative took root alongside 8 Community Kitchens with a collective objective to supplement the Johannesburg-based communities composed of Lorentzville, Bezuidenhout Valley and Troyeville with food-stuff throughout the South Africa’s Covid lockdowns and resulting civil unrests. After an incubation period, this assemblage of activities is now becoming an independent organisation known as The People’s Pantry (TPP), advocating for food sovereignty in South Africa by implementing plans to combat hunger, food wastage and climate change.
TPP facilitates an innovative community swop shop where locals, without the income to comfortably do so, access food in a manner unlike the day-to-day consumer’s engagement with major grocery chain stores and supermarkets. When community members hand in recyclable plastics, carton boxes and tins, they receive points that are redeemable at TPP’s swop shop. In this way, what would perhaps be a cold distribution of goods becomes a considered and intimate connection to a community and network towards a sense of collective wellbeing.
TPP’s vision is based on the pragmatic and ground-zero configuring and interrogation of food distribution and sharing systems as a means to figuring out and ensuring the “how” of we as everyday people encountering each other in shared geography can live well where our food habits and patterns are concerned. As we grow in size and shape, we aim to transform community mindsets towards food distribution and consumption.
The implementation of training programs for sustainable gardening, cooking and catering, as well as the procurement of industrial kitchens to be used for local food processing and upskilling of local food entrepreneurs are part of our long-term plans achieve our aim to re-imagine and evolve (to alternative and contextually localised processes) humanity’s relationship with food. TPP will, ideally, grow to be able facilitate collaborations between SMMEs with varying concerns, culinary enterprises and small-scale farmers to share knowledge, produce and distribute food and resources with mindfulness in continuing the work of creating a sustainable and local ecosystem.
Invest
In order to maintain our current activities and move towards our future objectives, we rely on public and private investment. We encourage you to, by any means, invest in the local and national alleviation nutrition insecurity by allowing yourself to donate resources and/or partnering with us and our outreach programs. Should you wish to donate, please find our banking details and contact information below:
Bank: FNB
Name: The People’s Pantry NPC
Bank Account Number: 62924672852
Branch Code: 250655
SWIFT Code: FIRNZAJJ
Partners
In the Headlines
- News 24 May 2021
- Daily Maverick One Year Celebration April 2021
- World Economic Forum April 2021
- Reuters November 2020
- Daily Maverick November 2020
- Daily Maverick November Pt 2
Wishlist
Here are some things we routinely need support with
- Gas and cooking oil for Kitchens’ activities
- Electricity for TPP’s distribution space
- Starch for the Kitchen (starch is locally popular in meals)
- Transport (collections, deliveries and to come meet you!)
- Internet access
- Packing materials
- Stationary and printing services
- IT support (laptops, phones, digital camera)
Give of your time?
- Graphic Designers to help us make pretty things We need help to design the merch range for sale at marker days and through the week.
- Photographers, videographers and Writers to assist with getting our story out there.
- Legal and Accounting Services.