To our network and those deploying food parcels and vouchers across Africa during the Covid-19 crisis.
It’s clear that the volume of food supply is not the only problem, but also accurately matching aggregate food supply to a quantifiable, and growing demand in our communities, is. Organisations are operating in the same communities, with separate beneficiary lists mostly on Excel. There is little data aggregation and intelligence we can see, which leaves multiple gaps. This is resulting in thousands of families getting an over supply of food, whilst others not receiving anything.
Challenge
As organisations are ramping up their support to millions of poor, food insecure households throughout South Africa (and the rest of the continent), affected by COVID-19, they are confronting a range of challenges:
- Large Food security gaps – Organisations are manually, and independently, managing the food demand (both food parcels and vouchers) on beneficiary lists, with no clear understanding what the food security need on the ground is. This results in both over, and under supply, and poor management of matching food supply to demand. Therefore mapping food insecurity at a household level is impossible.
- Lack of funding at scale – There is a clear lack of consistent funding for organisations serving communities across South Africa. These organisations also lack the ability to provide transparent data to donors regarding who has been served and the aggregate needs of the communities they are serving.
- Lack of management capacity – Many of the organisations are leaning on a large volunteer network, who will soon be returning to work. These volunteers need to be replaced with more efficient systems and data collection to professionalize their service
GFM Solution
GFM can address some of these challenges by allowing non-profits and community activists to:
- Digitize their beneficiaries
- Create a digital ID of each household, their beneficiaries, and capture additional socio-economic data, mapped on Google Earth
- Create date, time, and GPS stamped zero rated transactions (food parcels and food vouchers) over a longitudinal period attached to each digital profile
- Measure actual food security or insecurity using the data
- Unlock new, innovative funding mechanisms with the data
- This innovative approach to funding allows funders to finance the validated ‘food parcel’ data as and when it is delivered to households in real time
- Initial pilots will occur over the next 14 days, giving funders transparency and proof that their money is finding its way to beneficiaries directly
- Integrate third party digital solutions
- Payment remittance, group savings, and lending products are all possible for non-profits/activists on the system with third party integration
- A closed digital network of non-profit/activists field workers using the GFM system, who can collaborate online together for best practice
At present, GFM has begun working with four non-profits in Gauteng, the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, and is in the process of digitally loading 12,000 households, and supporting the feeding of 40,000 people on the system. Additionally, GFM has interest from eight organisations, covering a further 55,000 households, and its first requests from Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. Click here for the demo.
The GFM team hosted a 1-hour webinar on the solution and answered questions on Tuesday 12 May. Click here for a recording of the webinar.
So, if you are involved with any initiative delivering food parcels/vouchers, and want to manage/aggregate your efforts. Please contact us to see if we can help you at [email protected]