The Pebbles Project is not only celebrating this huge milestone this year but they have also been counted among the best in bringing social innovation to the world of education and health programmes through their newly launched Pebbles Kitchen.
At the recent Community Chest Impumelelo Social Innovations Awards (CCISIA) ceremony held at the Artscape Theatre Centre on 10 November, the Pebbles Kitchen and Nutrition Programme received the Social Innovator Award in Health in acknowledgement of the excellent service and innovation showcased in their mission to improve the lives of South Africans. The CCISIA programme is a leading awards programme that identifies, recognises and awards socially innovative initiatives in Africa. Through, mentorship, thought leadership, monitoring, evaluation and learning, strategic investment and pragmatic master classes, they are building an African-led, global social innovation movement. The theme for this year’s awards was “Building a culture of resilience and excellence in service to South Africa’s people”.
“We are extremely proud of the Pebbles Kitchen team, led by Dominic Johnson-Allen, to have achieved this recognition in the kitchen’s first year of operation….” says Sophia Warner, Founder & Director of Pebbles. “We pride ourselves on being an innovative organisation and always look for ways to improve and achieve more impact for our beneficiaries through our various social and education programmes and are honoured to have been recognized for this with this award by the CCISIA.”
In January 2019 Pebbles Project opened its first ‘social enterprise’ food production facility which currently cooks 1300 nutritious meals a day which are blast chilled, packed and frozen ready for distribution to the Pebbles Early Childhood Development (ECD) and After-School Clubs (ASC) facilities. The kitchen also supplies meals to other charitable organisations in and around the Western Cape.
Until last year Pebbles purchased daily prepared meals from an external service provider, but the dream was always to own their own kitchen where they can prepare high-quality, reasonably-cost and nutritious meals. After extensive research conducted in 2015 and commitment by the Dutch based Stichting Clouds Foundation & Goede Mensen to fund this huge undertaking, the dream was realised. Since February 2019, the kitchen has already produced and distributed over 165000 meals.
The goal of the Pebbles new kitchen is to grow the number of prepared meals each day to 5000 and distribute these to local NPOs, schools, children’s homes and colleges. Any surplus funds acquired from these sales will ensure subsidised future selling prices.
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Charmaine Gola or visit www.pebblesproject.co.za/nutrition-programmes/
Pebbles Project
Charmaine Gola
Fundraising & PR Manager
021 865 1019
charmaine@pebblesproject.co.za
Pebbles Kitchen
Dominic Johnson-Allen
0844585200
dominic@pebblesproject.co.za