New management for My Father’s House

My Father’s House, a community food kitchen in Simon’s Town, will be under new management soon.

The organisation, which has cooked thousands of meals for the homeless and vulnerable families across the far south since 2020, will be taken over by CRC Cares, a non-profit community and social upliftment arm of the Christian Revival Church (CRC) False Bay based in Westlake.

The kitchen was founded by Pastor Shaddie Valayadum and his family during lockdown in response to a food shortage, and at the time, fed up to 1 000 needy people a day (“My Father’s House cooks up a storm for the needy,” Echo, March 18, 2021).

As the lockdown continued, so did the need for food, and the community initiative was registered as a non-profit organisation and was run by a board of eight members, Pastor Valayadum, his wife Liza, their then 18-year-old son Bracyn and several volunteers from Simon’s Town, Ocean View, and Masiphumelele.

Deena Pillay took over as director after Pastor Valayadum was appointed CEO of The Haven Night Shelter in February last year (“My Father’s House founder to head The Haven,” Echo February 9, 2023).

The current chairman of the board, Nico Panagio, said the number of board members and volunteers had dwindled after lockdown and while Mr Pillay had done an excellent job, the staff shortages had made it hard to keep going.

“After trying various options to get new board members, we realised we couldn’t keep up and the time had come to close the doors completely,” said Mr Panagio.

Pastor Shawn Nortje, of CRC False Bay, said he had wanted to get involved after hearing about My Father’s House from Pastor Valayadum, who had joined the church earlier this year

The church would be taking over the organisation in its entirety, he said. The current board would be dissolved and the church would appoint a new executive committee with the old board members still being involved as volunteers.

“None of the current operations will cease; we will add to its operations and scale it up,” he said.

Pastor Valayadum said that as a member of the church, he and his family would be involved in the outreach work. He felt the move would get My Father’s House back to its main role of feeding the needy and helping people out of homelessness.

Mr Panagio said the board welcomed the move.

“We will do a full handover of our positions in the next few weeks as we want to ensure a seamless transfer without any interruptions of our services.”

A public meeting would be held soon to introduce the new executive committee, he said.