The Cape SAJBD has been involved in various initiatives leading up to the national lockdown and since it was announced, including helping a team of experts and communal leaders draft and distribute safety guidelines tailored to the local Jewish community.
During this trying time, a big focus of ours has been our legal research with Tyla Dallas and the legal subcommittee, whose work has helped the board break down various legislation that came into play during the lockdown for the community’s education and information. We’ve made various toolkits and posters available on our website and our social media platforms, and provided the community with regular COVID-19 updates as the local situation progressed. Our digital Food Bank campaign in support of JCS has raised over R65,000 towards care packages for vulnerable Cape Town Jews.
Together with the national SAJBD team, we’ve brought together a virtual #YomHaShoah2020 ceremony and 24 posts shared across platforms for the 24 hours of the Shoah, celebrating the lives of local Holocaust survivors. We do ongoing work with various communal organisations to provide support to local Jews and people in need. We hope our renewed focus on access to food in April/May 2020 will result in successfully raising resources to support local refugee communities during the lockdown and in its aftermath. Our resources have enabled us to provide X food parcels to local Burundi, Congolese and Rwandan communities.
