More than 550 children and adults in Pefferville receive meals three days a week through Plateless, a nonprofit organisation founded by Angel and Larissa Snyman after they saw the difficulties faced by families in the community.
The organisation, which began operating in its current form in 2023, runs a soup kitchen from a fenced container site in Pefferville, preparing warm meals every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
It also provides sandwiches and fruit to children every weekday morning before they leave for school.
Larissa said the project grew from a series of attempts to find a practical way of helping the community, where her partner grew up.
“We felt like we needed to do something,” she said.
The couple initially built a playground at their site but repeatedly had to repair it after it was damaged.
After eventually removing it, they began distributing food parcels to families but found that this did not always ensure that food reached children.
“If you give a food parcel to a family, there is a grandmother, a grandfather and a mother, and there are too many adults and not so many kids in a family,” Larissa said.
Some food parcels were also sold, leading them to stop the initiative and consider another approach.
“We woke up one morning and looked at each other, and we were like, ‘Let’s go cook for the kids,’” she said.
The first meals were cooked towards the end of 2023, with about 80 to 100 children initially coming to collect food.
The numbers have since increased, with between 500 and 1,000 children and adults sometimes attending when meals are prepared.
Children are served first, followed by adults.
“We actually feed everyone in the community. The kids come first,” Larissa said.
“It’s always our priority to feed the kids first, but we do also feed the grown-ups because even grown-ups are hungry.”
Plateless also runs a soccer club, with four teams ranging from under-11s to seniors.
Angel said the aim was to give children an activity outside school and keep them away from crime and substance abuse.
The organisation receives some assistance from sponsors, including vegetables from Frutorama, Super Value food, Star bread, NTT VW Beacon Bay and Selborne Primary School.
A hunter, who asked not to be named, also donates meat when available, while other ingredients are funded through donations and contributions from the couple.
The project has also created small employment opportunities in the community, with two cooks and three general workers employed by Plateless, while volunteers also assist when larger meals are prepared.
Angel said the scale of the cooking could be demanding.
“When you cook for 1,000 kids, it’s a lot of work,” she said.
Larissa said the conditions she encountered in Pefferville were difficult to witness.
“I am originally from Switzerland, so as I came here and we saw how bad the situation is, and obviously my husband who grew up in the area, explained to me a lot about his community, we felt like we needed to do something.”
Larissa said it was heartbreaking to see so many unemployed parents, children exposed to substance abuse, and hungry children playing unsupervised on busy roads.
“I know what we do won’t change the situation, but it definitely makes a difference to many families that benefit from it.”
The children have become more than beneficiaries of the project.
“I know almost every name of every child; they have become our children.”
Lanche Schultz nominated Angel and Larissa Snyman for the Daily Dispatch Local Heroes accolades, saying their work through Plateless has become an important source of food for children in Pefferville.
Schultz said many children relied on the meals they received from the organisation as their only meal of the day.
She said the couple’s commitment stood out because of the personal sacrifices they made to keep the project running.
Angel grew up in Pefferville, while Larissa is originally from Switzerland.
The couple met on Instagram and later built a life together in KuGompo City.
Schultz said Larissa decided to dedicate herself to helping the children after living with Angel’s family and seeing their circumstances firsthand.
“She often says they are ‘all her children’,” Schultz said.
She recalled first visiting the project when meals were being prepared on an open fire outside Angel’s family home, with more than 200 children arriving for food.
Since then, Plateless has secured a donated container and grown to feed more than 550 children each time it cooks.
“They sacrifice their time, their energy, their finances, their comfort and often their own needs to make sure these children do not go hungry,” Schultz said.
One of the beneficiaries, Deborah Krait, 48, said the soup kitchen helped everyone, especially children and single mothers.
“I am an unemployed single mother, and depend on my children’s social grant to survive, but with Plateless, I know my children and I will have supper and I don’t have to worry about morning meals,” Krait said.
“I have been a beneficiary since the establishment of the soup kitchen, and I take my whole family with me.
“I wish they would receive more sponsors to keep it going, because in this community, we are all struggling to make ends meet, but the team caters for more than food, and they really lighten our burden.”