INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

the building could be further renovated, it had made significant progress since he had
joined the board. He then returned my question and asked which aspect I would prioritize
in the budget. I suggested that employee wages would be worthy of prioritizing. I recalled
the plight of Marc, and suggested that he not only fulfilled his contractual obligations as
an employee but also provided the intangible benefit of a role model for some of the
children.
This conversation helped to reinforce the idea that the center was simultaneously a
community and an organization, and that balancing the welfare of its employees while
maintaining its financial viability was not an easy task. The need to provide food and
nutrition was a recurring challenge the center faced. This was made tangible to me one
day as I was speaking to the center’s manager and Pastor Mike’s daughter-in-law, Sarah
Sunker when a large arrival of donated food products was being brought in. As dozens of
bags of maize meal and rice were carried in, I asked her how long she thought it would
last. “Maybe a month or a month and a half,” she mentioned. It seemed like such a short
amount of time for the amount of food being hauled in, but that was the demand for food
for fifty children plus staff.
“Thankfully,” she mentioned, “all this stuff is donated. All the maize meal and rice
and juice mix. It’s really just the perishables that we need to keep replenishing.” That
began to make sense of why groceries occupied a modest R336,878 of the center’s
budget, slightly less than it paid for utilities. In spite of that, Sarah still needed to make a
trip to a nearby grocery store twice a week to replenish perishables like meat or fresh
vegetables. “Many of the children here are on specialized diets developed by a
nutritionist. Especially when they’re on ARV’s, their body has very specific needs for
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