Context

Nelson Mandela University’s official response to addressing the nutritional needs of students, is the provisioning of food parcels via Campus Health clinics. During 2023, 1 100 parcels (sponsored by Tiger Brands) were distributed per month. These were insufficient to meet the demand. For 2024, the sponsoring company is only able to provide 600 parcels per month – amounting to 120 food parcels per campus.

 

For the month of February only, this is set to be 2000 because of surplus from December and January.

 

Recently NSFAS announced that nationally 87 000 university students are at risk of not being funded following budget cuts. Thus, it is almost certain that a large group of Mandela University’s student population will be in need of food relief during the first weeks of the new academic year.

 

While the Student Hunger Subgroup of the Mandela University Food Systems programme in the Engagement Office, is committed to initiate, implement and support approaches to address students’ food related needs, that are long term by nature, sustainable and comprehensive, the looming crisis calls for immediate short-term relief.

 

Various departments, units, offices and staff have provided much-needed support to students in the past on an ad hoc basis. In the spirit of the institutional value of ubuntu, more departments, units, offices and staff are called to assist students for the first six weeks of the academic year.

For those who want to provide support but are not sure how, here is a list of possibilities that will be updated regularly: See Responses

Please note: this information was correct at the time it was written.

- The Student Hunger Subgroup