Ubuntu Mundo Q2 2024 Update

Feed the Children of the World

Ubuntu Mundo continues to pursue its ambitious plans for growth in 2024. By year end, we will feed more children than ever before – 1,000 children each day – and establish a stable financial platform from which to continue to grow – a commercial farm that will help sustain the feeding program.

Our mission remains the same: Feed the Children of the World, and we will do so by ensuring financial stability, creating jobs, and uplifting communities.

 

Feeding

Our original community kitchen and garden in Bodlayabongolo is thriving, feeding 350 children each day. Over the past three months we have constructed a second community kitchen in Bolla Tau, a neighboring village. On July 29, we opened the Bolla Tau doors for the first time, where we will serve meals to an additional 300 children each day. We expect that together both kitchens will feed a total of 1,000 children daily by the end of the year. Exciting times!

Under the supervision of Simon Sekgobela, our head of Bolla Tau operations, community members have worked diligently to build a state-of-the-art kitchen, including rocket stoves designed by students at the University of Virginia. These high efficiency stoves reduce the amount of wood consumed and smoke created, lowering costs and improving the work experience for our team in the kitchen. This new kitchen creates a cost-efficient operation today with an extremely large capacity for future growth – Bolla Tau is an exciting investment in the children we feed daily and the possibility of expansion and innovation in the years ahead.

 

Farming

Our vegetable garden in Bodlayabongolo has expanded its growing capacity to support the new kitchen in Bolla Tau. It is estimated that by year’s end this organic garden will produce 80% of the fresh vegetables that will go into 1,000 daily meals. This is quite remarkable, and all realized in the heart of the community.

Our other farming initiative – the creation of a commercial farm – is well under way. The farm will be run as a social enterprise, where net profits will be used to support our feeding programs. We have constructed greenhouses on about a third of the new farmland and planted our first green peppers four weeks ago. The first harvest will be at the end of September. We will cultivate and build greenhouses on the remaining farmland with the goal of completing the farm infrastructure by mid-2025. In all we will be farming 7 hectares of land or nearly 18 acres, all in support of feeding children.

So, we are growing on every front – the revenue we generate from farming, the organic produce we cultivate for our feeding program, and the number of hot, nutritious meals we serve to children each day. These are very exciting times at Ubuntu which could not be realized without you. We thank you for being our partner on this journey. Together we are improving the health and wellbeing of many children and families in rural South Africa.

Ubuntu!