MES  (Mould Empower Serve) have started up a food kitchen in the Presbyterian Church Hall at the corner of Louw and Hafele Streets, a few minutes walk from the Durbanville Catholic Church.  MES is one of several organisations that SVP are able to help thanks to your generous donations. MES is one of our food partners we are supporting during the lockdown crisis and we have been supporting them for many years.

The objective of the MES food kitchens is to help those marginalised and impoverished people in the Durbanville area.  The marginalised and impoverished are generally adults older than 36 years in marginalised communities who are typically poorer, disempowered, unemployed and at-risk communities, many of which are homeless and have health problems.

MES will also have a social worker in attendance and will offer their free help and guidance in their rehabilitation programme (to those who desire it) and offer a free meal daily to those who join their programme. (You can read about the various MES programmes below.)

MES GROW initiative

The MES GROW initiative we have also supported for many years. GROW is a job rehabilitation programme that provides an alternative to the homeless and unemployed community to aggressive begging and petty crimes.Your donation will enable a full GROW team (1 Foreman and 4 GROW Participants) to have guaranteed shifts for a month and give them access to OT services. This is often all that is needed to pull them out of hopelessness.

MES Safe Space

MES have a Safe Space facility in Bellville (near the library) for the homeless and vulnerable offering a safe and secure nights sleep. During lockdown levels 5 and 4 they accommodated 60 homeless in this facility and served them each 3 meals each day. MES also served daily food in the adjacent car park to over 200 hungry each day. 

Food vouchers

You can also help by purchasing a booklet of  10 food vouchers for about R50 from any of the soup kitchens situated in Durbanville, Bellville and Brackenfell, or from the Durbanville Catholic Church (021-976-1550).  With only a R5 food coupon anyone can make a positive difference in the lives of street people.

The video below illustrates the work that MES are doing to help the lesser privileged in our community and show you other ways in which you can help.