What Makes Us Unique
Approach
Our feeding efforts exist in containerised kitchens we refer to as “pods”.
This means that:
• All staff will undergo training in customer care, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and quality service.
• New pod inspector and assessor jobs are created to ensure the highest Food Hygiene & Safety standards.
• Feeding staff receive a stipend for their services and every person who represents us is trained and equipped to serve our beneficiaries with kindness and compassion.
• The bread from our bakeries is enriched with nutrients, vitamins, and minerals specifically designed to eliminate malnutrition.
The Dandelion’s Philosophy’s approach ensures we’re able to contribute to long-lasting change.
We use innovation and commitments to social transformation to design solutions resulting in long-term independence and autonomy. A few examples of how we apply our unique and pioneering method.
We’re acquiring fertile land to plant various vegetables and herbs in the poorest and most destitute regions of South Africa. This approach helps us create further employment and reduces produce costs used to feed from our pods. This is achieved by sharing the land we have acquired from newly trained community farmers who will become the exclusive suppliers of our produce.
Our own businesses will also buy herbs and vegetables from our own farms, thereby contributing to our circular economy of opportunity.
We’re starting up innovative, scalable, and sustainable empowerment businesses to train the people we feed to become workers and owners of their own businesses. Our unique model ensures 20% of all businesses we set up goes back into feeding, agriculture, and establishing new businesses.
We engage with businesses, communities, government, the eldery, and traditional healers to ensure our objectives are always clear and stakeholders and decision-makers involved are aware and supportive of our work in their areas.
We believe we have a duty of accountability to those who enable our work, thus our work is always 100% cashless. We’re working to add tap-to-pay points and displaying our banking details on our pods and bakeries to ensure all funds we receive can be accounted for.
We have 8 main differentiators - the things that make us unique and and mean we’re no ordinary charity. Read more about our differentiators below.
Differentiators
WE ARE NOT SAVIOURS.
We eliminate the risk of falling into a “saviour” complex. Instead of focusing on short-term reprieve for communities, we oppose enabling further dependency—with little to no long-term impacts or change—by focusing on the objectives and not on marketing ourselves.
We focus on: eliminating one-off handouts and short-term windfalls, educating those in need out of poverty, ensuring impartiality and objectivity, and creating an environment of inclusivity.
WE CREATE SYSTEMIC CHANGE.
Our objective is to collaborate for change by addressing overlap, fragmentation, and duplication, thereby challenging the current ineffective charitable model that doesn’t directly address marginalisation and disenfranchisement in the long run.
Through transformational kindness, education, and innovation, we seek to disrupt in order to ensure basic needs are met and that our work is a catalyst for generational change and prosperity.
We will achieve this by: creating awareness of food sources, and providing a variety of nutritious plant-based foods for the people we serve; introduce fortified bread through our bakeries to address malnutrition and cognitive development shortfalls; partner with other nonprofits, corporates, and government bodies to create and provide work for newly-skilled workers; provide internships and work experience opportunities for graduates; and create new employment opportunities from our products, services, and consumption.
WE ARE FEEDING TO STOP FEEDING.
Our pods, bakeries, farming, and enterprise models allow us to take the challenge of hunger off the table, by feeding those in need, while simultaneously creating a platform for employment, and starting the dialogue to address the root causes of hunger and poverty.
How? By creating realistic career prospects in cooking, feeding, baking, and farming; cooks, bakers, farmers, and feeders come from within the communities we feed and invariably become part of the solution; and all the food we serve is plant-based, thus both sustainable and available to all, and free from prejudice, preference, or any dietary exclusions.
WE EDUCATE FOR IMPACT.
Education is by far the most important tool for breaking socio-economic barriers and inequality. From our online university, to the curriculum of the schools we have adopted, our aim is to make education more accessible and relevant, while encouraging opportunities for everyone.
We believe that through the integration of African wisdom, values, and practices into our schooling, we are forging a new age of learners with solutions tailored to their environment. We embrace diversity, nurture and create new employment opportunities, partner with other nonprofits to provide certified and accredited learning in an array of practical and relevant skills, view socio-economic challenges as a platform to learn and nurture opportunity from adversity, and commit to educating, monitoring, and moderating interactions between members of different communities to ensure DEI standards are upheld.
WE EMPOWER STRATEGICALLY.
We see data as a decision-making tool, and take context and circumstances into account when empowering communities. We always use the strengths, potential, and interests of individuals to help them develop into leaders and new entrepreneurs. We employ a diverse range of programmes to holistically develop individuals’ skills, nurture their physical and psychological health, and provide them with training and innovative entrepreneurial opportunities—either within The Dandelion Philosophy itself, or within our partner networks.
We will achieve this through: self-awarness training via our Education and Psychosocial Programme; addressing the legacies of Apartheid; developing entrepenurship and bussiness skills, security, and health and safety training; paid community engagement; work expereince for graduates; and our Community Investment Fund that acts as a voice for other organisations who lack online presence, or the resources to expand and represent themselves.
We will: launch a significant amount of disruptive initiatives designed to empower those in need with lasting impact; bring about innovative solutions that address multiple challenges - from everyday problems to socio-economic and environmental challenges; empower individuals to build lasting transformation in their own lives and the wider community; start a Community Investment Fund to encourage, develop, and support entrepreneurs and their innovations; and create new streams of revenue - such as cryptocurrency and NFT’s - to allow The Dandelion Philosophy to shift from a reliance on donations to self-funded autonomy.
WE DRIVE INNOVATION.
Kindness through innovation is our superpower. Our model allows individuals to grow through our work and innovative businesses. Our aim is to create 7 500 new long-term jobs over the next 5 years, with an additional impact to over 100 000 people in the form of trauma counselling, internships, and work experience opportunities.
WE HEAL.
We firmly hold the belief that without adequately caring for our workers, volunteers, and communities, we cannot enable our social transformation goals. Some of our initiatives focus on restoring body, mind, and spirit, while others are intended to lead interfaith dialogue. Our aim is to celebrate diversity and work towards the universal goals of peace, prosperity, and collaboration.
We plan to achieve this through our “Prayer In The Park” initiative, which aims to educate on religious, racial, and cultural differences through storytelling; our Psychosocial Program that is aimed at ensuring our workers, volunteers, and the communities we aim to heal are given access to psychologists and social support; and by creating awareness, acknowledging, and driving efforts to directly address trauma and inequality.
WE ALIGN WITH THE GOALS.
We strive to make meaningful contributions to change directly through the coming together of our innovative work and The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - universal goals aimed at ending hunger, poverty, and unemployment around the world. The SDGs serve as a guiding light for The Dandelion Philosophy’s work and ensure that we are united with other organisations around the world to create a “more sustainable future for all”
The Dandelion Philosophy’s portfolio of work currently addresses 14 of the 17 SDGs, and our Circular Economy and Environmental Sustainability model ensures that all of our projects and partner organisations remain compliant with the SDGs through ongoing guidance and support. Our Community Investment Fund further serves to create opportunities and funding for individuals and other nonprofits who lack the resources and online presence to successfully share their work and secure appropriate support.