Ottery, home to more than  6,000 South Africans, is a community situated next to Cape Town’s leafy southern suburbs. 

The national lockdown has placed tremendous strain on many of Ottery’s residents’ ability to work and put food on the table for their loved ones. 

Practising social distancing here is also very difficult, as it is typical for a small flat to house as many as 12 people. 

One resident, Lauren Juries, is hoping to make a difference – and has turned to crowdfunding to help feed Ottery’s most vulnerable. 

Juries, a domestic worker,  identified more than 100 families in her area who are in urgent need of some form of support during the lockdown.

Juries launched a campaign on donations-based crowdfunding platform BackaBuddy in April, teaming up with YeboFresh, Omega Family Fellowship, PowerTime, Hands of Honour and Shoprite to make a meaningful contribution in her community.

BackaBuddy is a proudly South African platform that gives individuals a way to raise funds for causes they feel passionate about. BackaBuddy has already raised more than R180m for various charities, individuals and causes across the country. 

Juries’s campaign has been live since April 17 and so far R69 516.56 has been raised to buy groceries, fruit and vegetables, meat and electricity for families in need.

“As a mother I always had a dream of helping people I my community, but never knew how to begin,” Juries says, adding at the start of the lockdown she wouldn’t have imagined she’d be campaigning for Ottery.

“There are a lot of underprivileged people in our community. People are struggling to get to the next day without food,” she says.

The public may support Juries’s efforts to assist vulnerable families in Ottery by making a donation at https://www.backabuddy.co.za/ottery-care
Watch Juries’s video appeal here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG9kRhhcwSA
For more information on BackaBuddy visit https://www.backabuddy.co.za/