This Mandela Day, SA Harvest is calling on South Africans to take part in a campaign that champions dignity, justice, and youth empowerment – one bucket at a time.
The 2025 Buckets of Nutrition for Matriculants campaign is a powerful public-facing initiative focused on equipping Grade 12 learners in underserved communities with the essentials they need to face their final school year with hope and resilience. Each curated bucket includes shelf-stable nutritious food, hygiene items, and basic stationery—small but significant tools to restore dignity and support academic success.
On 18 July, SA Harvest will host public bucket-packing activations at Pavilion Mall in KwaZulu-Natal and Melrose Arch in Gauteng, with the help of committed partners including Rhodes Food Group, H&M, NUMUTI, AMDEC, and others. With music, school choirs, and community engagement on the day, the events offer individuals and corporates a chance to contribute meaningfully.
In a national show of solidarity, the Road Freight Association (RFA) has stepped up to provide fleet capacity, warehouse space, and distribution logistics, ensuring the buckets reach learners across South Africa.
The campaign is grounded in sobering findings from the recent SERI Food (In)Security Report. More than 63% of South African households face food insecurity, with 23.1% in severe need. Stunting affects 30% of boys and 25% of girls under age five, with lifelong implications for learning and development. Nutrition directly affects cognitive function; poor diets mean poor academic outcomes, especially for Black girls in low-income households. During the pandemic, 400,000 children and 1.8 million households were affected by “perpetual hunger.” Yet, 10 million tonnes of food go to waste in South Africa each year.
“Food justice is education justice,” says Ozzy Nel, COO of SA Harvest. “When young people don’t have access to nutritious meals, it’s not just their health that suffers – it’s their futures. These buckets are an act of solidarity and a rejection of a broken system that allows food to go to waste while learners go hungry.”
Last year’s Mandela Month campaign saw 2,879 buckets packed by over 350 volunteers across three cities, containing more than 74,800 individual food items, including protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and nutrients. Distribution was facilitated by 19 community-based organisations.
In December, SA Harvest partnered with The Daily Maverick and Missionvale Care Centre to deliver 106 buckets of nutritious food, new clothes for mothers and babies, and 5 kg bags of maize to parents and grandparents of hospitalised children in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro. Donations from Daily Maverick readers surpassed R715,000.
This year’s campaign invites all South Africans to play a part. You can sponsor a bucket for R500, join a packing event at Melrose Arch or Pavilion Mall on 18 July, or partner with SA Harvest for in-house activations or logistics support. Donations can be made at SA Harvest, using the reference “Buckets”.
About SA Harvest
SA Harvest is South Africa’s fastest-growing food rescue organisation, transforming food security and environmental sustainability through strategic supply-chain innovation. To date, SA Harvest has distributed over 88 million meals, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, food waste, and plastic pollution by diverting surplus food away from landfills.
ALSO SEE: FOOD OR FUNDS: 7 WAYS TO GIVE BACK THIS MANDELA DAY
Images: Supplied
