The grant recognizes community impact the organization has in creating food gardens to strengthen long-term resilience in underserved areas
As part of The Starbucks Foundation’s Global Community Impact Grants program, FoodForward SA was selected to receive a $10 000 grant. This grant award is thanks to a nomination from Starbucks partner company (licensee) Rand GP, which operates the Starbucks brand in South Africa. Through this unique program, The Starbucks Foundation invites licensees to nominate local nonprofit organizations in their community. This round of grant recipients was selected from more than 100 nominated local nonprofit organizations across 50 markets around the world.
Through the Food Gardens Connect Programme, FoodForward SA teaches unemployed people to grow their own food and provides them with equipment, seedlings, and hands-on mentoring with a guaranteed buy-back of their harvest, creating reliable income opportunities and strengthening long-term resilience in underserved communities.
“Food Gardens Connect is showing incredible progress. Seeing lives transformed and communities empowered reminds us that meaningful change is only possible through collective action. A very special thank you to The Starbucks Foundation for helping make this possible,” says Andy du Plessis, FoodForward SA managing director.
“This grant has enabled the expansion of the Food Gardens Connect programme to five new beneficiary organisations, with an estimated 800 people who may benefit.”
The Starbucks Foundation’s Global Community Impact Grants program supports nonprofit organizations driving programs that create meaningful local or regional impact, expanding on the company’s ambition to contribute positively to our communities. This program builds on other initiatives of The Starbucks Foundation, including Neighborhood Grants, Origin Grants, and Disaster Response Grants — which focus on enabling community resiliency and prosperity and uplifting communities affected by disaster. Since the program launch in 2022, The Starbucks Foundation and licensee partners have awarded more than $14 million in Global Community Impact Grants to more than 200 nonprofit organizations across more than 60 markets.
“Since the beginning, Starbucks has set out to be a different kind of company — one that prioritizes our partners (employees), customers, and the communities we serve in locally relevant ways,” said Brady Brewer, CEO, International at Starbucks and board member of The Starbucks Foundation. “Through Global Community Impact Grants, we ask our partners to elevate the causes they care about in their communities, and we follow their lead, making donations to the local organizations they care about most.”
Learn more about the Global Community Impact Grants program at About Starbucks.
FoodForward SA
FoodForward SA is South Africa’s only registered food bank. Our core focus is the recovery of edible surplus food from across the food system to address two urgent challenges:
- Using this unsellable but still edible food to address food insecurity across South Africa. The not-for-profit organisation provides food to nearly 900,000 vulnerable people daily through a network of 2,200 registered and vetted beneficiary organisations that undertake life-saving work in underserved urban and rural communities.
- Reducing food loss and waste and its resultant methane emissions that cause climate change.
The Starbucks Foundation
The Starbucks Foundation strengthens humanity by transforming lives across the world, with a focus on enabling community resiliency and prosperity and uplifting communities affected by disaster. Established in 1997, The Starbucks Foundation is a Section 501(c)(3) charitable organization under U.S. law. Learn more at About Starbucks
