.: Ladles of Love Sarmiethon

When Ladles of Love calls, we answer that call if we can. They have done such amazing things to feed people during and after Covid, provisioning small soup kitchens, aiding people to plant up small areas with vegetables to feed themselves, teaching how to enrich the soil and making sandwiches. Ladles of Love started as a single soup kitchen serving 70 hot meals at their first official event. Today, they support numerous other community kitchens, schools, social enterprises, and NPOs with much-needed groceries and other goods, allowing them to reach out further and touch the lives of millions of vulnerable people who need it now more than ever

This time it was to support their effort to make 100000 sandwiches in one day in a 6-hour Sarmiethon Challenge, hosted by the V&A Waterfront at Makers Landing and at The Edwardian Society in Houghton, Johannesburg. The call went out to corporates and to simple volunteers like us. This is what we saw when we arrived. So well organised. The Sarmiethon coincided with World Sandwich Day, also celebrated that day

Corporate tables and individual volunteers, working fast to make as many sandwiches as possible

Team Smile Makers with their funny hats

The 'music' and management station. It was the one criticism we have, they just played thump, thump, thump noise for most of the session. How good would it have been to get people singing along to inspiring tunes? Songs to spur their efforts like Happy!, Feed the World, He Ain’t Heavy, The Macarena, Rain in Africa, and the song we all danced to during Covid: Jerusalema. We are sure that we could come up with a great list. On the right, Lynne waiting to get stuck in when the shift changes

Everyone had their own strategy. Shake out a loaf from the packet, all supplied free by the Blue Ribbon bakery. Lay them out in rows, take a spoonful of the peanut butter and jam mix and dollop it onto the slices, spread as quickly as you can, then cover with another slice. When you have 10 sandwiches, carefully put them back into the bag, twist and seal and put into a crate to be counted. Start again......

You get a good rhythm going, no matter what your method. We managed two hours and we made 40 loaves between us in that time. Inspiring, exhausting and exhilarating. Lynne had a chair to sit on, as she is not good at standing for hours, but could make sandwiches as fast as anyone

It is very sticky work! Rhodes Fruit Farms provided the jams

The man who started Ladles of Love, Danny Diliberto. The Ladles of Love soup kitchen for the homeless was founded in 2014 by Daniele (Danny) Diliberto on the basis of an ancient Sanskrit word Seva, meaning giving of yourself, wanting nothing in return. You can read all about Ladles of Love on their website https://ladlesoflove.org.za/, on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ladlesofloveZA/ and on https://www.givengain.com/c/ladlesoflove/about. They welcome donations of money, groceries, or of time and they love people to raise money for the organization. You can read about their current programmes here https://ladlesoflove.org.za/our-programmes/

Cleaning up afterwards!

Some of our crates, nearly filled

The leader board. We were assigned to the Kindness team and it looks as though we came third

When all was clean and tidy, we headed outside to hear the results,
combining both the Cape Town and the Johannesburg figures
We were offered a cool drink or a glass of wine
Thanks to Ken Forrester, we really enjoyed a glass of his Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc

“Lite” beers - not really light at 4% alcohol

Teams gathered together to hear their figures and we chatted to other volunteers

Time for the results
We were surprised that the MC still had a voice, as she had been the cheerleader during the Sarmiethon,
egging us all on to work harder and faster

Second prize went to the Blue Ribbon Bakeries team for making 6780 sandwiches

They did a little dance of joy when they heard that they also won the prize for the best Gees (spirit) during the event

Accepting their prizes

and posing for photographs

Danny announced that the final total of sandwiches made in 6 hours was 91 538, just short of the target
If we had worked another hour or two, we may well have made it
There was a time constraint as the venue was needed for another function

Then, as a postscript, 17500 sandwiches came in from individual supporters after everyone had gone home
This brought the total production to 109540, significantly beating the target of 100000

This was the Team Smile Makers team, here accepting the award for first prize
The same team of eight worked all day and made 6980 sandwiches

With their prizes

The South Easter was beginning to blow a tablecloth over Table Mountain and it was time to head home for a shower
Our team "Kindness" came third with 6358 sandwiches