South Africa has been in full and then partial lockdown due to the Covid pandemic since March 26, 2020. Wearing a mask has become mandatory in any public and workplaces. Due to the economic crisis people have been struggling financially to survive and lots of NPOs has been involved in distributing food vouchers or food parcels to communities to fight against hunger.
Township Patterns main clients have been the Meeting and Events industry and therefore it has been heavily impacted as the meetings and conference industry is globally on hold. We adapted very quickly in April and registered as an Essential Goods Services with the government in order to provide cloth face masks to corporations and communities.
The project aims at securing the 50 jobs held by the women working in the township-based cooperatives and participating to fight against the pandemic by providing a reusable bag (with printed COVID-19 health messages) and a couple of masks to 20,000 households of townships communities.
All 40,000 masks and 20,000 bags are going to be produced by the 50 women employed by the 6 cooperatives in the network enabling then to regain financial strength. This project will help us to further communicate about our recovery from COVID-19 lockdown and hopefully gain new customers interested in our production capacity.
The printed messages on the reusable bag made out of recycled PET will create additional awareness about the key attitudes to adopt in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Because these bags are solid and reusable, they will be carried around the communities and further help to get the key messages across the population. The washable, durable masks will be a great help for the 25,000 family beneficiaries.
