Prinses Vlei Feeding Programme

St Vincent de Paul Feeding Project

Report of Visit to SVP at Prinsesvlei, Southfield
Report and pictures by Simon Norton (July 20, 2010)

On Tuesday 20th July 2010, Rene Esson and I visited the small village of corrugated iron dwellings located at the northern end of Prinsesvlei right alongside the M5 arterial road. We first met Marion Green of Pius X parish and her colleague Beryl Johnson who together manage and operate a feeding scheme at this village. They are also the focal point for handling the many problems that arise in such a community including sick people, children in need of schooling and contact with the municipality and local city councillor.

Food is currently acquired from a Lions Feeding scheme which distributes this to the various projects that Lions support including this scheme. The food is collected every Tuesday from the Lions food distribution depot in Wynberg ( sometimes Mitchell’s Plain ) and packed into plastic shopping bags and distributed by Marion Green and her colleague to the families at the Prinsesvlei settlement.

They feed 39 people (27 adults and 12 children) every Tuesday and also supply 14 breakfasts for a period of a week each month. The breakfast feeding is shared with some other churches that handle the other weeks of the month. Marion showed us her records and she has provided 2800 parcels/meals to individuals in the past year.

On our visit we called at the Southfield home of Beryl Johnson who arranges for the parcels to be prepared and packed. While the recipients will welcome the food parcels, the contents of the parcels are hopelessly inadequate to fully feed a family. The Constantia funding will go a long way to improving the food supply to the Prinsesvlei community.

The scheme keeps very accurate records of how many people it feeds and who the families are, the number of children, their ages and whether they attend school.