Post-Mandela Day planning
Last week, the MANGO-OMC team attended a food packing drive with FoodForwardSA at the Century City conference centre. We contributed 67 minutes to sorting and packing various food items into boxes that had been collected at Pick ‘n Pay stores the weekend before.
FoodForwardSA is an organisation that collects edible excess food from large manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, and distributes it to non-profit organisations around South Africa with the aim of feeding thousands of hungry people daily. The aim of the Mandela Day food drive was to encourage South African’s to donate selected food items at their local Pick n Pay store from the 14th-16th July and for the donated food to be sorted and packed on the 18th of July, which the MANGO team participated in.
Although the event was enjoyable, I feel that the event itself wasn’t necessarily one for team building. As the conference centre was packed full of volunteers from various business around Cape Town, the opportunity to work together as a team was not a viable option. Although this wasn’t the primary objective of the day, it is something to consider when selecting events in the future. In the beginning, we were all scattered around the room and doing different tasks – some were packing food in the production line and others were carrying food packages to the centre of the room so that they could be grouped for distribution. However, in saying so, I feel that the event itself was well organised and it was great to see the support of Pick n Pay, KFM and Cape Talk. It was also amazing to witness all of the support and enthusiasm from the volunteers during the 67 minutes – the spirit and motivation in the room was incredibly high which made it fun!
As I said in my previous post Organising Team Events, I thoroughly enjoyed organising the event and it was such a great feeling to hear and see that my colleagues were enjoying themselves and that definitely showed that the planning paid off! It felt equally great knowing that we were able to give back our time in the spirit of Mandela Day in the form of volunteering to help those in need, and I can definitely say that we are all very proud that we had supported such a great initiative. We look forward to seeing what FoodForwardSA have in store for Mandela Day in the future!