What's better than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick? Why, winning the Power of Pennies draw worth R5800 at the Taste of Punjab restaurant on Wednesday night, of course.
And if you don't believe me, just ask Karlien Kruger, whose name was drawn out of the hat (a Zulu pot, actually) at an informal get-together. Drawn by a Dutch businessman, no less, and drawn along with a rubber snake!
The Punjab provided drinks and snacks for the informal gathering organised by Helene Bramwell, where it was announced that the number of participants had increased significantly from the first draw in December last year. The aim is to get more (and more) people to join for the equivalent of only R100 per month to stand a chance of winning 50% of the money accumulated over the previous 4 month period.
Martin (Tinie) Barten, Jankees Sligcher's visiting Dutch from Pas Reform Hatchery Technologies, did the draw from the Zulu pot, which also contained a toy rubber snake.
Tinie was unfazed by the schoolboy prank (maybe it was Dutch courage) and proceeded to draw Karlien's name.
Just think, with more contributions, the winning pot could be even bigger in four months' time and you could be the winner.
Earlier in the day Brian Nell from Rise Against Hunger Africa spoke at the regular club meeting at the Parkview Golf Club and told the meeting that they are involved in three main activities, the first being meal packing exercises, mainly with corporates, who use it as a team building exercise as well as part of their Corporate Social Investment portfolio.
Rise Against Hunger uses these events as its main fundraisers and get teams of 15 people to a production line to package lentils, split peas, rice and a vitamin sachet that can feed six adults or ten children.
Rise against Hunger `Africa processes 6.5 million meal packets a year and involves 40 000 volunteers.
The second leg of the operation is distributing these packages to children in need and they supply meals to early childhood development centres all over the country, targeting unregistered ECDs where the need is the largest.
Every box with food packages they donate is a saving of R300 for the centres, who are then encouraged to use the money saved on infrastructure development. How this money is spent, is monitored regularly so that the centre can grow to meet the needs of the community and develop until they're in a position to gain formal registration.
That, one might add, sounds pure Rotary talk with the emphasis on sustainability and community upliftment.
Rise Against Hunger Africa, along with partners in America and elsewhere, is also involved with disaster relief and, as an example, provided 59 000 meals in KwaZulu-Natal during and after the rioting and looting last year.
In recent years they've also moved into sustainable farming in an effort to provide their own products for the packages rather than just sourcing them from elsewhere and they already have five growing projects in place, where half of what is produced goes towards the packages and the other half is sold off to keep the farms growing.
Brian was particularly interested to hear Glen Meyer speak about the 800 hectare of arable land that the Department of Correctional Services has at the Leeuwkop Prison and the tie-in with the Rotary seedling tunnel at the National School of the Arts in Braamfontein.
Rotary at work again.
Glen and Babette Gallard reported that they'd visited the seedling farm and that 6000 seedlings had just been delivered to Leeuwkop, the first of many deliveries to come. The project could potentially deliver 1.3 million to 1.4 million seedlings a year to Leeuwkop, he said.
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