Community initiatives step up for children as holiday hunger bites

The festive season represents a time of cheer and rest for many, but for others it is rife with challenges. Schools and early learning programmes close down for the summer holiday, taking with them access to feeding schemes and safe play spaces for many thousands of children. For some caregivers, it becomes an uphill battle just to put food on the table.

Professor Eric Atmore, the director of the Centre for Early Childhood Development, pointed out that the ECD Census 2021 found that more than 1.6 million children were enrolled in early learning programmes across the country. He estimated that between 400,000 and 500,000 of these children were likely to be food insecure, based on the UN Children’s Fund figures stating that 23% of children in South Africa lived in severe food poverty.

“Our concern with the early childhood development (ECD) centres not operating, is that those children are going to be highly vulnerable to hunger during the school holidays, because often their parents can’t replace what the ECD centre provides,” said Atmore.

One ECD programme, the Khumbulani Health, Education and Resource Centre in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, usually looks after 297 children between the ages of six months and six years. Anathi Katsi Katsi, the project coordinator at Khumbulani, said that the closure of the centre during the holiday was challenging for caregivers who continued to work over Christmas and New Year, as well as those battling unemployment.

“We’re thinking of those vulnerable children who are being exposed to the lifestyles of the holidays at this moment, and those who have nothing on their tables because remember, most of the children will come to Khumbulani because they want to have nutrition,” said Katsi Katsi.

“If these programmes are now on hold due to the holidays, what are these children receiving in terms of food during the day, and who is supporting them? Because in the Khumbulani space, they will receive psychosocial support with the care of social workers.”

Khumbulani’s leaders hope to secure funding that would allow them to host a summer holiday programme for children in future, providing much-needed relief to working parents. In the meantime, they have continued to run a soup kitchen from the centre every Tuesday and Thursday.

“We do notice that there are some children… from the Khumbulani aftercare programme who will come to the soup kitchen as well to have those nutritious meals,” said Katsi Katsi.

Right to play

Katsi Katsi noted that a lack of safe play areas in Khayelitsha posed an additional risk to children during the holidays, with many young people resorting to playing in the streets.

“When they come to Khumbalani for the soup kitchen, it opens that opportunity [for play]... as they have the playground for ECD. While children are waiting for the soup kitchen to dish up... they will come into that space and play,” she said.

Concerns about safe play areas during the summer break were also spotlighted by Nkosikhona Swartbooi, the organiser behind the Right to Play Campaign and a long-time housing activist. He noted that the schools where children usually spent most of their time could provide safe and regulated recreational activities.

“That is not the case for our communities. There’s that mismatch in terms of the safety for kids in schools and the safety for kids at home… because most parents work. With most parents coming from poor and working-class communities, particularly the black and coloured communities, children are raised by the street… It puts them in a position of vulnerability in terms of what they get taught,” he said.

Rural communities

In the rural areas, problems of food insecurity and safety among children have long been a challenging feature of the festive season. The Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation told Daily Maverick it had “consistently observed a noticeable increase in food insecurity among children in rural and farmworker communities during the festive season”.

“When schools and early childhood development centres close, many children lose access to daily meals provided through school nutrition and feeding schemes. For households already facing unemployment, seasonal farm work or low and irregular incomes, this gap places significant pressure on families and often results in reduced meal frequency, poorer nutritional quality and heightened vulnerability for children,” said Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation founder Billy Claasen.

Schools and ECD centres often serve as the primary safe environments for children during the year, according to Claasen. Once they close, many children are left without supervision while caregivers seek seasonal work or manage household responsibilities.

“This increases children’s exposure to risks such as accidents, substance abuse, exploitation and gender-based violence, particularly in under-resourced rural areas,” said Claasen.

The Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation is running a Christmas project aimed at providing immediate relief to vulnerable children during the end-of-year period. It distributes food parcels and nutritious meals to at-risk households, provides basic necessities such as hygiene packs and warm clothing, and creates safe, child-friendly spaces through community-based activities.

“The project seeks not only to address hunger, but also to ensure that children experience care, safety and a sense of inclusion during a time of year that can otherwise deepen inequality,” said Claasen.

Communities of care

Khumbulani and the Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation are two of the many organisations that strive to support vulnerable children and households during the festive season. Across the country, there are programmes through which ordinary South Africans can contribute to alleviating hunger and bringing joy.

Daily Maverick and SA Harvest have embarked on their third annual campaign to combat hunger in the Eastern Cape, with the aim of providing food to thousands of families.

Read more: Daily Maverick and SA Harvest’s food campaign — Restoring dignity and hope this festive season

FoodForward South Africa has collected donations to provide “Festive Food Boxes” across the country.

Other organisations that have made a difference this Christmas season include:

• Ladles of Love’s soup kitchen, which runs from mid-December to mid-January in Cape Town.
• The Hope Exchange’s #Feed5000 programme, which aims to provide more than 14,000 meals to Cape Town’s homeless community from the organisation’s premises on Roeland Street between 15 December 2025 and 11 January 2026.
• Operation Antifreeze’s Christmas hamper drive, which provides non-perishable food hampers to vulnerable families in Ekurhuleni.
• Place of Mercy and Hope and Lwazi Educare’s holiday programme, which provides routine and meals to children from the Langbos Informal Settlement outside Addo, Eastern Cape.

Atmore emphasised that communities played an important role in protecting and uplifting vulnerable children over the holiday period.

“It clearly makes children more vulnerable, and I think this is where communities have to come to the party… This concept of ‘your child is my child and my child is your child, and we look out for each other’s children’ becomes so much more important at this time. A young child… is particularly vulnerable to all sorts of dangers, and this is where community members [and] families have to be on the lookout,” he said.

Claasen advocated for a “multi-sectoral approach” to the problem that included strengthening partnerships between municipalities, civil society organisations and local businesses to fund and support holiday interventions.

“Longer term, addressing structural poverty, food systems resilience and access to social protection remains essential. These interventions also need to include farming communities, and therefore farmers, farmers’ organisations and… ethical trade organisations need to be included in interventions,” he said.

Lori Lake, a communication and education specialist at the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, pointed out that while the closure of schools and ECD centres over the holiday increased children’s vulnerability to hunger, food insecurity remained a problem year round, particularly for very young children who were unlikely to attend early learning programmes.

“There’s a real question in my mind about what is the most appropriate strategy to improve child nutrition in SA, and that it may make more sense to be investing in increasing the value of the Child Support Grant to ensure that more food of better quality is reaching children in families, including these very young children who are most vulnerable to undernutrition,” she said.

The value of the grant had been steadily eroded due to inflation, continued Lake, meaning it was no longer adequate in meeting the nutritional needs of a child. DM

How to donate

To donate to the Daily Maverick and SA Harvest initiative:

Please use your name, surname and DM as a reference. If you would like to remain anonymous, you need only use DM as a reference.

SA Harvest
Business Platinum Account
First National Bank
Account Number: 62693490478
Branch Code: 255955 (Randpark Ridge)
Swift: FIRNZAJJ

To donate online, please follow this link: Buckets of Hope - SA Harvest

The campaign will run until early January.

To donate to the Rufado (Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation) Christmas project:

Please make a deposit directly into the NGO’s bank account and reference it as “RUFADO XMAS PROJECT”.

Bank: Standard Bank

Account Name: Rural and Farmworkers Development Organisation

Account Number: 10147243848

Account Type: Current

Branch Code: 051001

SWIFT Code: SBZAZAJJ