Well-known city centre eaterie Mariams has partnered with NGO Streetscapes to provide food for the homeless. Yunus Fayker tells us how this seemingly small initiative is part of his life philosophy.
Yunus Fayker is not out to save the world. He believes you need to “start somewhere small and that a little bit goes a long way”. This is how he explains the recent collaboration of his business Mariams Kitchen with NGO Streetscapes to provide food for the homeless.
Yunus, who has owned Mariams for 10 years with his wife Leyuhna, says the latest initiative is not really new. Years ago they started donating food from their kitchen to members of the CBD’s homeless community. Before they knew it, word had spread and the situation eventually became difficult to manage.
“Due to the fact that we make our chips a certain way, for ‘Gatsbys’ for instance, we have off-cuts which we also fry and put to the side … I eat these myself with bread or a roll. Because there was just so much of this excess food especially on our busiest days, I started giving some of it to desperately hungry homeless people who were asking for food.
“While our intentions were good, demand grew with more people gathering outside the shop each day. And at times we would not be able to meet their requests, resulting in some of the recipients arguing and fighting amongst themselves for the food. Over time, this anti-social and sometimes aggressive behaviour also started to have a negative impact on surrounding businesses and hawkers on St Georges Mall. At the beginning of January things came to a head. But we didn’t want to stop giving people in need food ... we just had to find a better way to do it,” says Yunus. Enter the Mariams Kitchen and Streetscapes partnership.
THE WAY FORWARD
Yunus was contemplating what to do when CCID’s Safety & Security assistant manager Alec Van De Rheede, also a close friend, visited his business. Alec suggested that Yunus get in touch with the CCID’s Social Development department.
“Soon after,” says Yunus, “I met with CCID fieldworker Mark Williams, who suggested we donate the food to participants on the Streetscapes projects in the CBD. And that’s what we’ve been doing since the middle of January.”
The Streetscapes programme is run by Khulisa Social Solutions, one of the CCID’s partner NGOs. It is a rehabilitation programme aimed at providing known homeless individuals with work opportunities, social services and the means to earn a living.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
With the new arrangement, Mariams Kitchen prepares the leftover food every day and a Streetscapes representative collects it from the restaurant at 14h00 to be distributed to eight Streetscapes participants on Long Street who are trying to rebuild their lives.
Says the CCID’s Social Development Manager Pat Eddy: “These individuals [Streetscapes participants] are still living on the streets and spend about six hours a day either with physical work or in rehabilitation groups, individual activities and counselling. The addition of the food is an excellent complement to the programme and a further way of restoring dignity and changing the behaviour of begging.”
Jesse Laitinen, Manager of Strategic Partnerships at Khulisa Social Solutions agrees with Pat and says she hopes the gesture of Mariams will inspire other CBD businesses to follow suit as “small sparks” can make a big difference.
“That is what happened on Long Street. Fork restaurant started supporting homeless people with work opportunities and today, through an initiative called 'Make Long Street Better', 20 businesses that belong to the Long Street Association pay salaries for eight homeless people in Long Street every month,” says Jesse.
Inspired by Mariams’ gesture, Long Street businessman Ed Saunders, who owns Fork and who has been involved in financially supporting homeless people on Long Street through the Make Long Street Better project, says he is now looking at also donating excess food from his restaurant to Streetscapes' participants.
“We simply cannot police away poverty. We need to all help and find solutions to uplift homeless people. And we have seen a great reduction in aggressive begging in Long Street due to the Streetscapes programme by Khulisa, CCID and the local businesses. This is proof that if we work together, we can make a difference,” says Ed.
IMAGES: CCID