A campaign by Harfield Village residents is supporting the Covid-19 charity work of two Hanover Park organisations.
The Harfield Village Association’s Campaign for Goodness has been running for the past month. It collects food, toiletries, cleaning products and other essentials.
The association is working with two Hanover Park organisations to get the aid to where it’s needed in that community.
HVA chairman James Fernie said they wanted to build community partnerships to learn from one another.
“We really had an army of people that stepped up to the plate, we used the WhatsApp network, the Harfied Village Facebook page and a marketing video to mobilise support.”
The campaign has received a large supply of canned food, vegetables, fish oil, tea, coffee, rice, brown lentils, cleaning detergents and toiletries.
The Fish Rite Hanover Park Cricket Club has 100 players of all ages and genders. The club helps to develop young cricket talent but with play “rained out” by Covid-19 it has been running feeding schemes and distributing food parcels across Hanover Park.
Club chairman Ashraf Allie said they had wanted to find a way to support their players and their players’ families and make sure they had food during lockdown.
“One of our members saw that HVA is looking to support a Hanover Park organisation, and we reached out to them and their support has been a blessing,” he said.
The Alcardo Andrews Foundation is a non-profit formed by Avril Andrews, in honour of her son who was murdered in gang violence over five years ago. It has been running feeding schemes in Hanover park for the past four years.
But sponsorship had dried up during lockdown and the foundation had had to look elsewhere for help, Ms Andrews said.
“We got support from HVA to support our grocery packs for hundreds of families.”
The HVA support meant the foundation could continue serving five 100-litre pots of food to 300 to 400 people daily, she said.
Ms Andrews hopes to continue working with the HVA after lockdown. Mr Fernie appealed to southern suburbs civic groups to help communities in need during the Covid-19 crisis.
To support the Campaign for Goodness, drop food in the trolley at the entrance of the Rosmead Avenue Spar; contact Mr Fernie at 082 496 4889 or jamesfernie@uthandosa.org; or visit the Harfield Village Association Facebook page.