Beautiful News

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, life still grows. While farmers have continued working during lockdown, the closure of schools, workplaces, and restaurants have left them with a surplus of produce. At the same time, countless people have lost their jobs and income, severely impacting their ability to provide food for their families. But Ashley Newell and Iming Lin have dug up a solution to this crisis.

SA POC at the Table

Video conversation with Food Flow ZA founders Iming Lin and Ashley Newell, Limpopo-based small scale farmer Mosa Hope Mapheto and Sakhisizwe youth development programme coordinator and distribution partner Mhinti Pato from Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay. Interviewed by journalist and SA POC at the Table founder Ishay Govender.

News from the Frontline: Episode 5 - Food Scarcity and Fighting Hunger during COVID-19

Today on News From The Frontline we are interrogating issues around Food Scarcity during lockdown and the time of COVID-19. Before Coronavirus hit the African continent, 239 million people in Sub Saharan Africa were already undernourished. And food insecurity has led many to argue that they’ll die of hunger long before Coronavirus can kill them. In this episode we speak to Nolubabalo Bulani, Theresa Wigley, Professor Ruth Hall and Ashley Newell.

China Plus News

Video: Brandon Mubaiwa, a Zimbabwean farmer based in South Africa, found himself in a predicament when lockdown started. His normal customers, restaurants, were forcibly closed when lockdown started at the end of March. Newly-established Food Flow, ended up buying vegetables to help Mubaiwa and to feed the vulnerable.

The Daily Maverick

Civil society groups have played an important role in responding to the COVID-19 social crisis in South Africa. Examples include the “community action networks” in Cape Town and Gauteng, as well as similar initiatives in more rural areas, such as the Eastern Cape. They also include extraordinary crisis response efforts by pre-existing NGOs, such as Boost Africa and Umgibe, and novel social innovations like Food Flow.

GoodHope FM

A chat with GOOD HOPE FM 's Dan Corder about our work together with ABALOBI enabling small scale fishers to keep the food flowing to their local communities!

UCT GSB’s Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way we think, live, play and work. It’s also bringing the innovators out in force – many of whom are rising to the challenge of helping the most vulnerable members of society. We spoke to Solange Rosa, Interim Director of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the UCT GSB, about why social innovation is thriving at this time and what we can do to ensure that the benefits it is bringing can be sustained in the longer term.

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Turning Short-Term Crisis Relief Into Longer-Term Social Innovation

How civil society responses to COVID-19 in South Africa are resisting the all-too-common return to pre-crisis “normal.”

Biz News

Audio: The country may be in lockdown for 21-days and the economy is virtually standing still. For many farmers the closure of restaurants means that they have no market for their crops. At the same time, the closure of schools means that thousands of children who relied on schools to give them a meal a day, are no longer fed.

Food in General

Podcast chat with Iming Lin from Meuse Farm and Food Flow and Daniel Smith from ABALOBI. Both Iming and Dan represent organisations that are transforming the way we interact with food and I am incredibly grateful that I had the chance to chat with them. In this conversation we look at the impact that the restaurant shut down has had on the food supply chain and more specifically how it has impacted small scale farmers and fishers. 

Food in the time of the coronavirus: Why we should be very, very afraid

By Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies

The social legitimacy of the ‘COVID-19 lockdown’, government’s regulations imposed to contain the spread of the virus, is most likely to run aground unless an urgent plan can be made to ensure that everyone in the country has access to sufficient food. And it’s not looking good.

Cape Talk

Radio: Food distribution under lockdown has been challenging to say the least, with many farmers having found they have no outlet for their produce. Ashley Newell is an alumni of the UCT GSB MPhil in Inclusive Innovation, and is also the co-founder of Food flow, an innovative new food redistribution programme.

Cape Talk

Radio: Food Flow is a new initiative pioneered during this crisis in Cape Town – with donations they buy produce from small-scale farmers who would usually supply the restaurant business – to make up essential vegetable boxes to distribute to communities facing food insecurity. Thus, protecting the supply chain for the future, keeping small farmers afloat – Food Flow shifts the flow of produce coming from farms to those most vulnerable. 

Voice of America

Our Voices 244 - COVID-19: Planting the Seeds for Sustainable Food Security. Our partnership with VrygrondUnited4Change (SpazaHub) featured along with PEDI Agrihub and ABALOBI.

Nature

Pandemic of hunger: COVID-19 is straining African food security, but also presents an opportunity for change. 13/10/20. An in-depth multimedia feature by Nature showcasing our partners Khathelelana and Muirwo Organics, and an interview with our Co-Founder Ashley Newell discussing our challenge ahead.

Eat Out

Food Flow: The initiative that’s helping both farmers and families in need. In this uncertain time, South Africa’s farms continue to grow produce and food even though, as we know, most restaurants they supply have closed their doors – and their kitchens – indefinitely. This is where Food Flow comes in.

V&A Waterfront's 100 Beautiful Things

As South Africans, we’ve always been known for ‘making a plan’. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how true that is, with companies reinventing themselves overnight and reaching out to help others, even when they are in distress. Today, we share 10 examples of small businesses and individuals who have used creativity as a solution to getting through this tumultuous time.

The Conversation

In South Africa a range of social solidarity networks have emerged to respond to the COVID-19 hunger crisis. They are a vital part of the societal response because of their speed, innovation, and local responsiveness. They complement the central role of government. Yet the government is struggling to develop this partnership and risks stifling solidarity networks with bureaucratic control.

Gender Links for Equality and Justice

…It was also an opportunity for Daniel Sher, head designer of sustainable fashion brand and manufacturing company, Good Good Good to get involved … The partnership has galvanised a formidable community of partners and recipients, illustrating recalibration of the words, ‘philanthropy’ and ‘collaboration’, both of which can be overused and undermined in a global crisis.

Cape Town TV

To find out about the effects of the lockdown on small scale farmers Helga Jansen Daugbej spoke to Ashley Newell, the co-founder of Food Flow, an initiative launched just four weeks ago in Cape Town. It uses donor funding to buy produce from small-scale farmers and food producers and delivers it to community organisations for distribution to those experiencing food insecurity during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

GSB Ideas Exchange

FROM UNCERTAINTY TO LASTING SOCIAL VALUE

While Covid-19 is wreaking havoc in our economy and our communities, it is simultaneously giving rise to compassion and innovation. Crisis has always been a driver of change, unlocking new ways of doing things, the question is can we sustain these into the future?