The City Council has brought in Mexicans to train township entrepreneurs and co-operative members on how to bake healthy bread.
The training was part of the city’s Go Jozi Healthy Lifestyle Programme which promotes healthy living and combats non-communicable diseases.
The entrepreneurs, including youths and women, were trained in baking healthy bread and in how to run viable businesses during a four-day workshop at the Health and Social Development Department.
The Mexicans, Enrique Gonzalez and Flavio Siller, own a company that makes nutritious and affordable processed foods using the latest technology. Gonzalez said they came to teach the baking skills to help alleviate unemployment while keeping people healthy, and he said he was impressed by the group’s enthusiasm and passion.
MMC for Health and Social Development, Nonceba Molwele commended the participants’ enthusiasm and said the workshop encouraged participants and helped them gain the new skill of producing healthy and affordable bread, and said it would make their businesses more sustainable.
“You will be able to generate more income, create jobs and relieve pressure on the government’s limited resources, which will be used on other needy citizens,” she said.
Department official Nero Maseko said the trainees will be able to make healthy bread, change the eating patterns of people and, as the bread has less sugar and salt, it will help bodies function properly by reducing obesity and high blood pressure. “The ingredients used were wheat, fibre, mangoes and avocados [which] also improve the taste of the bread,” he said.
Maseko added that they would train 5 000 people in the city in the next five years.
Trainees Thato Molotsane of BTM Food Solutions and her business partner, Zama Mchunu, of Pimville, Soweto, said they would share their new skills with other group members.
The Mexican company was selected to do the training by a City delegation which visited that country last year.
Details: City of Joburg 011 407 7354; mediaqueries@joburg.org.za
