The growth of FoodBank in the last few months has resulted in a network of four operational FoodBanks, serving some 900 beneficiary organisations, and providing more that 1.2 million meals a month.  While statistics measure the impact FoodBank is making on reducing hunger, behind the figures there are stories of hope for each child, women or man who is helped.
One set of stories comes from the children at Luzuko Primary School in Gugulethu, one of FoodBank's beneficiary organisations. Each child was asked to draw pictures of their hopes and dreams, or what they wanted to be when they grow up.

Here is one boy’s story:

Thando (not his real name) is nine years old and lives with his grandmother and father, having lost a mother to tuberculosis when he was four.  They live in a wood and iron shack in an informal housing settlement outside Gugulethu. The room he lives in is basic: he sleeps on the floor, and the room he shares with two other siblings has only two small air vents and no windows. When he walks to school each day he passes the emerging middle class part of Gugulethu and looks at all the newly erected brick houses.  It is this walk that provided the inspiration for his picture that day.

The picture he drew was of a brick home, with an oversized blue window as the central feature of the house.  When asked to explain the picture Thando replied:

One day we are going to have a family home like this.  It is made of bricks, and outside there is a garden and grass to play.  And my room has a big window. All the rooms in the house have big windows so they can see the garden.

Thando provides a perfect metaphor for what giving a child a regular meal can accomplish. FoodBank is in the business of creating ‘windows in every room’. By taking away the stifling problem of hunger and food insecurity, the organisation allow their beneficiaries to create windows of opportunity in the rooms of their dreams.