As you know, the month of April is the month of Songkran celebrations. If you don’t know what Songkran is, then you probably have’t been to Thailand (yet) or haven’t been into one of our stores lately.
Songkran (Thai New Year) is a celebration of new beginnings and goodwill towards others. The people of Thailand celebrate this festive occasion by pouring scented water over one another to symbolise a fresh start, leaving food in front of temples for the monks and doing other good deeds to give back to the community.
Mr Chai, the beloved founder of Simply Asia, uses this time of the year to focus on those in need. So this year we introduced our “Songkran Special” meal deal: for only R65 you can purchase one of the promotional dishes (514 – Chicken with roasted chilli paste & cashew nut noodles; 303 – Chicken with basil & chilli stir-fry; 409 – Roasted chilli paste & mushroom stir-fry; and 623 – Seafood Thai rice) plus a Lipton Ice Tea (Peach or Lemon) and for every Songkran Special meal deal sold, we’ll give R5 to FeedSA – our selected charity for this initiative.
FeedSA is a non-profit organisation whose main aim is to establish feeding programmes and education within the townships for all those who receive no other forms of funding whatsoever, and for the children who go to school with an empty stomach. They also implement the building and setting up of creches, from the infrastructure to the operations and curriculum. FeedSA focuses on the JHB area (from Alexandra Township, Soweto, Orlando West, Orange Farm and the West Rand), but also have several benefactors in the KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape regions. One such benefactor is Fano Ngcobo who organises various Soup Kitchens in and around the Zola Township in Somerset West.
With all this in mind, on Monday, 22 April 2013 we filled our delivery truck with freshly cooked food, took along a couple of our Thai chefs and made our way to Somerset West to visit the community of Mbhele Street in the Zola Township.
We arrived in convey with Clarence Ford of Heart FM and our beautifully branded truck pulling in last, and were soon surrounded by over 100 singing, cheering and dancing children – possibly the most heartwarming welcoming we have ever received! Our Thai chefs were overjoyed by the sight that they had bearly parked the truck when they jumped out and started celebrating with the children.
The community was exceptionally welcoming and we soon got down to business of feeding everyone with some delicious food. Our Thai chefs simply couldn’t resist the children and were seen sitting with the youngest children and feeding them, while taking plenty of pictures and we even suspect they were Skyping and Facetiming their friends back home in Thailand. 🙂
A very fun afternoon was had by all and a we were very pleased to be able to assist Fano with his Soup Kitchen and ensure that a few hundred children went to bed with very full tummies.
The next day we received the following message from Fano:
“On behalf of the street community of Mbhele Street, Zola Township, we wish to extend our gratitude for the very nice meal served by everybody involved in Simply Asia. The food was absolutely delicious and is still the talk of the week within our community! For the many kids and adults of our community, who would go to sleep on empty tummies, the afternoon spent together was indeed a blessing.
Thank you for making time with us notwithstanding the busy work schedule by all involved in the preparation for the afternoon to be a success. And what a success it was!”
We are so thankful to have met Fano through the FeedSA foundation, and are pleased to say that aftei’m havinr only 3 weeks of the promotion we have raised just short of R20,000 from everyone who has bought a ‘Songkran Special’ meal deal – Thank you for the support! The promotion runs until 31 May 2013, so there is plenty of time to help us raise more funds.
Also, on Tuesday, 30 April 2013, our Durbanville (Western Cape) and Krugersdorp (Gauteng) will be donating the full day’s turnover (that’s every cent every customer spends in the store) to the total funds that will be given to FeedSA once the campaign is over. (This applies to both sit-down and takeaway orders.) If you’d like to book a table for this evening and help us help FeedSA, please contact Simply Asia Durbanville on 021 975 5891 or Simply Asia Krugersdorp on 011 660 5184.
To view more pics from our fun day out, please visit our Facebook page, or click here.
