“… Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living…” – Albert Einstein

Last week our annual, Kingswood Interact Dinner was held at the Wyvern Club. Each year, the Interacters award the Ubuntu Award to someone in the Makhanda community who shows humanity towards others and serves those around them.

It is our most prestigious award, and this year we have the pleasure and honour of awarding it to Mrs Mary Birt.

Mrs Mary Birt is and entrepreneur, restaurateur, wife, mother of four children and a grandmother to seven children. She started Food for Futures in March 2018 without any funding and worked with a group of 50 individuals who would come to her home to collect food parcels every week. Through this endeavour and close working relationship, Mrs Birt was able to form solid relationships with her beneficiaries and every collection came with a cooked meal and a lovely catchup session on the porch.

In March, 2020, with our country on the brink of lockdown and the ever-growing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for food, grew tenfold. Mary and her team needed a bigger premise from which to feed those in our community who most needed it. She formed a partnership with St John’s Ambulance and through their joint efforts they were able to feed approximately 500 people on a weekly basis.

Over the course of the last 7 months, Mary and her team have worked tirelessly with securing, packing and delivering food parcels to families in and around Makhanda. A lot of organisation comes with such an endeavour, yet Mary and her team continue to do the work with smiles on their faces.

Mary Birt is an example to our Grahamstown community, caring, kind and community orientated. She believes that God sends people to her so that she help them and in so doing, she believes that she is fulfilling her purpose as a kingdom agent. We hope that Mrs Mary Birt and her project and community endeavours will be blessed abundantly for many more years to come.