Is your restaurant StreetSmart?
Is your restaurant StreetSmart?
Wed, 19 Dec 2007
Cape Town’s leading restaurants have raised over R560 000 to support StreetSmart, a fundraising organisation dedicated to the social integration of the city’s street children which culminated in the charity’s patron, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu presenting R300 000 to three charitable beneficiaries — Learn to Live, Ons Plek and The Homestead.
Currently 35 restaurants are embracing the organisation’s vision to make a real difference to street children’s lives. Funds are raised by adding a R5 donation to each table’s bill at the participating restaurants. This donation is voluntary and diners are able to contribute more if they wish to.
Overwhelming support
"The support from Cape Town’s member restaurants this year has been overwhelming and without their motivation for the project such initiatives we are embarking upon just simply would not happen," said Margi Biggs, chairperson of StreetSmart South Africa.
"Our goal is to grow member restaurants in the next year by encouraging many more of Cape Town’s fine eating establishments to become involved with the StreetSmart initiative to fund more much needed projects in the city and Western Cape in 2008," she added.
In total StreetSmart has donated a much needed R300 000 cash boost — twice as much as last year — to the organisation’s three beneficiary charities.
Learn to Live, which provides education for street children, will spend the money on an Outreach Worker programme. With its mission to help homeless boys reconstruct their shattered lives, The Homestead will invest in its family re-construction programmes whilst Ons Plek, the only shelter that takes in homeless girls, will use the money for its family reunification and skills development programmes. Ons Plek is a safe house for girls who do not only need food and shelter, but also a safe haven from violence that they may have endured.
First of its kind
StreetSmart, the country’s first and only fundraising initiative through leading restaurants, was launched in 2005 under the patronage of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
Restaurants are recruited from in and around Cape Town to help raise funds in aid of the beneficiaries. The organisation received its first donation (R1855) in June 2005 from Harveys at the Mansions, the signature restaurant at Winchester Mansions. Now the restaurant donates on average R4529 per month.
For more information on how you can join or to make a donation, contact StreetSmart on +27 21 434 1144 or visit www.streetsmartsa.org.za.
