Mandela Day inspires UCT sandwich run

Doing their bit for Madiba: Staff of the Communication and Marketing Department makes lunch sandwiches for children from a local primary school.

Twenty five loaves of bread, 2.75 kg of peanut butter, 3.75 kg of apricot jam, 3 kg of margarine and 67 minutes.

These were the ingredients of a Mandela Day initiative that saw staff of UCT's Communication and Marketing Department (CMD) making 250 lunch sandwiches for needy children at Garden Village School in Maitland. Staff members formed an assembly line at Welgelegen, where in between preparing the delicious sarmies they reminisced about their childhood experiences with peanut butter sandwiches. Some recalled the first time they had a peanut butter and jam sandwich and what a gastronomic experience that was. Others demonstrated how they would clean the peanut butter jar using their fingers.

"Our transformation committee decided on this initiative because children are so close to Madiba's heart. This was a wonderful opportunity for the staff of the CMD to come together and do something small that makes a difference in a child's life," said Campbell Lyons, chairperson of the CMD transformation committee.

This is the first of many initiatives that staff and departments at UCT had lined up for the day.