Back in November, we set up a campaign to collect funds for a new kitchen. A few months later, we are excited to announce that it is finally ready!

Anyone that’s been to DAKTARI before knows our kitchen wasn’t really equipped to cook for big groups of people. There was barely enough room in there for our kitchen staff to move around and the stove didn’t function well either. Once we realised things really needed to change, we set up a campaign on GlobalGiving to renovate our kitchen. They say a picture tells a thousands words, please see the “before” shots below and you’ll know why we were in dire need of these improvements.

         kitchen - end

Now however, with the help of so many of you, we have a kitchen most people can only dream of. Besides our GlobalGiving fundraising campaign, we also called some South African corporations to help us to reduce our renovation and equipment costs. Thankfully, we got a lot of help! We’d like to give a special shoutout to our wonderful sponsors who made our kitchen even better than we’d hoped for:

  • Thank you to Wilma and Koen Barends who made the first big donation and showed us that we really needed to upgrade our kitchen.
  • Thank you to Sausage Tree for guiding Wilma and Koen Barends to DAKTARI.
  • Thank you to Hirsch’s for donating a beautiful set of pots.
  • Thank you to Sephaku cement for donating 160 bags of cement.
  • Thank you to Stonebuilt for the discount on our sinks.
  • Thank you to Buco for the discounts, logistics and transport.
  • Thank you to Electrolux for providing us with a gas cooker.
  • Thank you to Italtile and CTM Hazyview for the brand new sink taps.
  • Thank you to Transtech Africa Global for the very generous donation.
  • Thank you to Macsteel for the roof tiles (+ many more things) and for teaching our staff how to install them.
  • Thank you to the French travellers who made a very generous donation.
  • Thank you to PG Bison for our new shelving.
  • Thank you to Steven Gandolfo for making a video for our project.
  • Thank you to everyone that donated through GlobalGiving!

The new kitchen feels like it’s about 6 times bigger than the old one and it’s painted a beautiful blue colour which makes it a soothing place to work too. With the new appliances, it’s a joy to cook again for our volunteers and children. No more bumping into each other, no more fighting over a working burner, no more bad moods in this kitchen and it is clean and hygienic all the time!

You must be on the edge of your seat by now to see this new kitchen! Well, check it out!

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