2025 in review: FoodForward SA strengthening community impact despite challenging year

Businesses, too, have been under immense pressure, downsizing, retrenching staff, and rethinking how they operate in an increasingly uncertain and volatile environment.

The challenges are even more pronounced for non-profit organisations (NPOs). Already operating under significant pressure and continually having to do more with less, NPOs face rising demand for their services in underserved communities during periods of weak economic growth and high unemployment. At the same time, they must contend with declining financial support, stretching their limited resources even further.

PwC’s December 2025 Economic Update highlights that consumers’ top concerns in 2025 were the rising cost of living, economic instability, health risks, climate change, social inequality, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. The report further notes that 'a four-person household receiving a minimum-wage income does not have enough money to afford a nutritious diet'.

High unemployment, coupled with deepening inequality, inevitably results in rising food and nutrition insecurity. Poor diets contribute to a range of health challenges, creating a cycle of vulnerability that becomes increasingly difficult to break.

At FoodForward SA, improving food and nutrition security through the recovery of edible surplus food remains the foundation of our work. Despite a challenging operating environment – where limited resources required careful prioritisation and mission consolidation, we continued to deliver meaningful, measurable impact to underserved communities.

This success is driven by strong collaboration across the food system. By working closely with our food donors to timeously recover their within-date, edible surplus food, we can strengthen and scale our food security strategies.

A powerful example of this collaboration is our Mother and Child Nutrition Programme. Over the past 18 months, more than 200 underweight pregnant and nursing mothers, as well as malnourished children, have regained a healthy nutritional status and are no longer considered at risk. A further 203 mothers and children are currently on a positive recovery trajectory, showing consistent improvements in their health and well-being.

One mother, whose child had been malnourished and also contracted TB, shared: “The food parcels have helped me a lot. My child was very underweight and suffering from TB, but now she is healthy.” Another mother said: “Before receiving the food parcels, the Mentor Mothers put me on the programme after weighing my child and finding he was underweight. Now I have noticed a positive change in my child’s weight.”

Another programme, Food Gardens Connect, is also showing incredible progress. Through this initiative, we train and mentor more than 50 previously unemployed people across nine underserved communities to grow their own food. This year alone, we have paid out more than R31,000 to our gardeners through our buy-back guarantee, ensuring they earn an income from the vegetables they produce.

Addressing rural food and nutrition insecurity, often more acute than in many urban areas, remains a costly and complex challenge. To bridge this gap, we have implemented our Mobile Rural Distribution (MRD) model, an innovative approach that keeps costs low while significantly improving access to nutritious food in remote towns and villages.

Through this model, we establish central distribution points, typically located at one of our BO premises, where BOs from surrounding rural communities can travel short distances to collect their monthly bulk food provisions. Our trucks cover the long-haul routes, enabling us to serve multiple remote communities efficiently. This approach is far more cost-effective than establishing permanent physical facilities and ensures that even the most isolated communities have consistent access to nutritious food.

This community impact is made possible by transforming a previously wasted resource, edible surplus food, into a powerful catalyst for improved food access and stronger, more resilient underserved communities.

Seeing lives transformed and communities empowered reminds us that meaningful change is only possible through collective action. Despite the challenges, we have seen meaningful progress – progress we are determined to build on as we move into 2026.