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What We Do · Food Rescue and Hunger Relief

We Don't Buy Food. Retailers Donate It. We Keep It Moving.

Every organisation that feeds people has to answer one question. Where does the money go?

At most of them it goes to food. Here it doesn't. Our food is donated, free, by retailers across KwaZulu-Natal who would otherwise throw it away. What you give pays for the diesel, the vehicles, the electricity and the people who move that food to local partners, to 3 creches, and to families who cannot get to either.

The food is free. Moving it is not.

This is exactly how it works.

The food rescue model

From Surplus to Supper.

South Africa throws away millions of tons of good food every year. Supermarkets overstock. Produce gets close to its date. Bakeries end each day with bread nobody will buy. Most of it ends up in landfill.

Where the food comes from

We intercept it.

They give the food freely. They benefit from tax certificates, less waste to dispose of, and real impact in the communities they trade in. We benefit from a supply chain that costs us R0 in stock.

  • Including the Distribution Centre and Freshmark
  • 7 locations on the north coast
  • Surplus and near-date stock
  • Verulam. Fresh produce
  • National food redistribution network

How it reaches the people who need it

Every weekday our vehicles leave 1 Hospital Hill Road in Tongaat while it is still dark.

  • Collection

    Vehicles run the north coast route, stop by stop, picking up what each retailer has set aside.

  • Sorting

    Everything comes back to the base in Tongaat, where volunteers sort by partner, by type, and by what will not keep.

  • Distribution

    It goes out again the same day, to partner kitchens or straight into direct feeding.

  • Serving

    Each partner cooks and serves their own street. Families eat.

The network

Nobody Appointed Any of Them.

We do not run the kitchens. Local people do, and they know exactly who in their street is going without this week.

Wiseman is a retired man in Hambanathi with a bakkie. He started by helping with transport in 2019. By 2023 he had taken over the whole organisation, and today families in Hambanathi get a food parcel because of him.

Pastor Bobby has run Seeds and Loaves of Bread in Tenance Manor, Phoenix for 23 years. On a Wednesday he feeds about 150 adults and 60 children, and he feeds children in the community every other day of the week. On weekends he drives for us.

There are others. A pastor who fed people out of his own pocket for 3 years before he asked anyone for help. A school teacher who turned her spare house into a homework centre. None of them was appointed. None was recruited. They started, and then they asked us for food. We supply. They serve.

Partners operate across Tongaat, Cottonlands, Inanda, Verulam, Hambanathi, Ntumzuma, Lloyd Melville, Shakaskraal, Shakaville, Phoenix, Buffelsdraai, Buffelsdale, Hazelmere, Gwala's Farm, Burbreeze and Durban.

Direct feeding in Tongaat

In Our Community. 6 Days A Week.

Beyond the partner network, Missions Ablaze feeds the Tongaat community directly.

Adel makes the soup on the base every morning. By lunchtime more than 150 people are fed in our community. Some have homes. Some do not. Some walked. All of them are welcome.

This is the oldest feeding programme we run, and the most personal. The same faces come back. The missionaries know their names.

The rest of the network

Not Everyone Can Come to a Kitchen.

Some people cannot reach a partner kitchen or our base. Two programmes go to them instead.

3

Creches

Creches

A child who eats can learn. Our 3 creches provide daily meals, a safe room and early education for children whose families cannot pay for private childcare.

Evalina started hers in Inanda with 2 children. She has 15 now, 5 days a week, and she feeds 20 adults in the community on top of that.

12

Households

Home feeding

Some are elderly. Some are housebound. We deliver to 12 households daily, with fresh and dry supplies restocked every 2 weeks to a month.

It is quiet work and it sits outside the spotlight. It has been running for years.

Disaster response

When the Community Needs Someone Who Has Not Left.

31 years in one place means we know what to do when things break.
  • 2021

    Covid and the KZN riots destroyed many of our food sources. We kept serving.

  • 2022

    400mm of rain buried communities. We kept serving.

  • 2024

    The Tongaat tornado. 250 hot meals a day, plus household goods, delivered across the affected areas.

We do not fundraise first and serve later. We serve, then we account for it. The network is built to take a hit.

Where your giving actually goes

Real Costs. Real Lines. Real Receipts.

Because the food is donated, every rand and dollar you give goes to the machine that moves it. These are the actual monthly operating costs.

That is roughly R83,500 a month to keep the whole operation running, about $4,175 at R20 to the dollar. Electricity is the biggest line on it, and not one cent of that is food.

$25 a month supports a missionary. $50 covers a partner kitchen's monthly supplies. No creative accounting. No cost-per-meal maths that dissolves when you look at it.

Where your giving goes

Electricity$2,000
Diesel$900
Vehicle maintenance$375
Kitchen running costs$50 each
Missionary support$25 each
Food$0 donated

Per meal moved

$0.14

How to be part of it

The Model Works Because People Keep Showing Up.

Come. Give. Send goods. Pray. There is more than one door in.
  • Partner as a company

    B-BBEE scorecard points, Section 18A certificates and employee volunteer days.

    Corporate partnerships
  • Partner as a church

    Send a team to work at the mission, or run a food drive at your own church.

    Church partnerships
  • Give your time

    A day, a weekend, or full time. Every department needs hands, from the vehicles to the kitchens.

    Join our team
  • Send goods

    Diesel, vehicles, equipment, services. Or run a food drive where you are.

    In-kind donations

Trust IT 2049/2000 · NPO 019-028 · PBO 930020955