Mashigos lend a helping hand to the poor of Alex
A mother-and-daughter duo with a giving heart aims to end hunger in the informal settlements.
Swaranago Soup Kitchen was started by Sanny Mashigo, her daughter Mpho Mashigo and 16 other women in 2020 during the hard lockdown.
Mpho said her mother is a self-employed woman who sells food on the streets. Before the 2020 hard lockdown, she would call children to line up and collect leftover food when it was time to knock off.
During Covid-19 when a lot of people lost their jobs she also had to stop operating, but she thought of the children she used to help and decided to resume cooking from her garage, not to sell but to feed the underprivileged children.
“We cater for the children in the informal settlements whose parents are not working. We also cater for old people as well and when we have more groceries during the weekends we also cater for the homeless,” said Mpho.
“My mother started off [on the feeding scheme] with leftover groceries from her business as she thought it was just for a short while but she decided to use her savings and continue.
“In January 2021 her savings were exhausted and she then went back to work, leaving me and three other women to operate the soup kitchen and she would send us money for that.”
After seeing that her mom’s business was going slow and things were getting tough, Mpho said she then resorted to social media where she posted requests for help and people came through for them.
“Last year, the Department of Social Development helped us with food parcels and Food Forward SA also helped with groceries but we pay a monthly fee. We also get help from a company called Seb4vision with vegetables on weekly basis,” Mpho added.
Mpho said they also do recycling to raise funds as they don’t have a donor. “We pick up cans and plastic bottles so we can buy bread for the feeding scheme.”
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