A non-governmental organisation on Monday donated 250 face masks to children in Mabuthweni to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.
This comes at a time when schools are set to reopen next month. as they are preparing for the reopening of schools in July in a bid to help in the fight against COVID-19.
Rare Diseases and Disabilities Foundation Africa (RaDDA) and Care Beyond Diagnosis a United States-based organisation came together to give face masks to Ward 13 Mabuthweni with other wards in the pipeline.
In an interview with CITE, RaDDA Founder and Director Tinotenda Mudarikwa said as an organisation they saw it fit to donate the face masks to children to complement government efforts in the fight to combat the spread of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
“As the country is anticipating the opening of schools and working on strategies to do that effectively, we discovered that children are not being put into cognisance,” said Mudarikwa.
“We, therefore, have started our kids range of masks which we have been making since the imposed lockdown began.”
He added that they were prioritising high-density suburbs as a way of uplifting marginalised communities.
“We are targeting children from high-density suburbs because we are working on uplifting the marginalised and we realised that most parents are struggling to provide basic food and it would be a further burden for them to provide masks,” he told CITE.
“The distribution of these masks will be in four phases to different locations so we started with Mabuthweni because that is where most of our projects are based.”
Mudarikwa added that they have so far donated 250 masks but their target is to donate 1000 masks.
“We have so far donated 250 masks to children in Mabuthweni, we are hoping to distribute a total of 1000 tiny masks from ECD to grade 4. ’We are targeting the most populated suburbs which are Iminyela, Makhokhoba, parts of Tshabalala as well as Old Lobhengula.”
Meanwhile, Mudarikwa has also produced a song meant to educate school-going children about the importance of wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic period with the video set to be released in due course.
