It was the restoration of dignity after handing out a cup of soup that led Danny Diliberto to establishing Ladles of Love, a food charity organisation in Cape Town that feeds those in need. His dedication to the cause has not gone unnoticed as he was named humanitarian of the year at the 2020 GQ Awards.
It was 2014 when Danny Deliberto took part in a course offered by the Art of Living Foundation in Cape Town. The course participants were required to give homeless people cups of tea as part of an exercise.
Diliberto was a restaurateur at the time and since the restaurant where he worked was close by, he could arrange for a pot of soup to be cooked and handed out to the homeless people instead.
Diliberto recalls giving a cup of soup to a homeless person wrapped up in a dirty duvet, “and definitely under the influence of something. He was just shouting and screaming.”
The homeless person quietened down when Diliberto offered him a cup of soup. “I walked away and he went back into that crazy headspace,” he says.
Diliberto found that to be a powerful moment in which he felt that offering a cup of soup could restore dignity.
It was this experience that inspired him to establish Ladles of Love — a food charity organisation in Cape Town.
“It’s like I had found my purpose, or life had aligned me with my purpose,” says Diliberto.
Starting a soup kitchen
Since he was a restaurateur at the time, it was not difficult for him to access a kitchen, gas and food. The fellow participants from the Art of Loving Foundation course volunteered to join him in starting up a soup kitchen.
Every Tuesday, for six weeks, the volunteers would borrow bicycles from the Mandela Rhodes Hotel and cycle around the city to find homeless people.
After the six weeks, 400 meals would be distributed to homeless people every Tuesday. As a result, Diliberto needed extra hands to assist in handing out the meals.
He made volunteering easy, however, in that volunteers did not have to help out on a regular basis.
“I’ve seen other organisations where they say ‘No, you need to commit, and you need to commit X amount of time’. And then when you don’t come, they make you sort of feel bad. I didn’t want to do that,” says Diliberto.
In recognition for his hard work and commitment to feeding those in need, Danny Diliberto (founder of Ladles of Love) was named Humanitarian of the Year at the 2020 GQ Awards. This is according to Cape Town Etc. PHOTO: Tina Ddamulira
Expansion
One day a couple of homeless people walked into the restaurant where Diliberto worked. They had heard about Diliberto’s soup kitchen and asked for his assistance in providing ingredients for a rehabilitation program they were doing through the Hope Exchange at Roeland Street, Cape
Town. Part of the program was to run a soup kitchen, which is why they were trying to source food, according to Diliberto. He agreed to assist them.
Eventually, the soup kitchen at the Hope Exchange stopped operating for reasons unknown. “I don’t know what happened. So, these guys were left stranded and they couldn’t do the soup kitchen anymore,” says Diliberto.
To keep the soup kitchen at the Hope Exchange running, Diliberto decided to take over and include it as another soup kitchen under Ladles of Love which was open every Saturday.
Diliberto then opened two more kitchens. The one was outside the Haven Shelter in an open parking area and served the food every Thursday. The other was at the Culemborg Bridge – a place where the homeless can sleep safely.
In addition to running the soup kitchen, Ladles of Love has held food charity campaigns and initiatives over the years. Approximately 25 tonnes of food is distributed to Ladle of Love’s beneficiaries each week. This is according to Cavil Smith, social media intern at Ladles of Love.
Approximately 25 tonnes of food is distributed to Ladle of Love’s beneficiaries each week. This is according to Cavil Smith, social media intern at Ladles of Love. PHOTO: Tina Ddamulira
Covid-19
When President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the first national lockdown last year, Diliberto knew that he would need to distribute food to different communities.
The following day, he contacted a couple that made sure that all of the cooked food was distributed to the homeless people in the city.
To distribute food into the communities, Danny decided to support the soup kitchens with bulk food.
“So, I provided them with all the ingredients that they need to cook with,” he says.
Diliberto explains that he would rather provide a million people with one meal a day than 10 000 people three meals a day. Connecting with soup kitchens and providing them with ingredients was the way for Diliberto to achieve this goal.
During this time, word had also spread out that Ladles of Love was providing ingredients for soup kitchens. As a result, Ladles of Love ended up providing ingredients for 158 soup kitchens.
One of the soup kitchens that became Ladles of Love’s beneficiary was Noluthando Childcare Centre in Hout Bay.
Each week, the daycare uses the ingredients to cook food for the people who live in Imizamo Yethu township in Hout Bay.
Danny Diliberto, founder of Ladles of Love, explains how his food charity organisation has been helping soup kitchens, such as Noluthando Childcare Centre in Hout Bay, since the start of the pandemic. VIDEO: Tina Ddamulira
Another adjustment, due to the pandemic, was that the Ladles of Love soup kitchens were shut down and all the food was redirected to the homeless shelters serving the homeless people.
“And then when Covid eased off and we were able to restart the kitchens, I decided to keep them all at our Roeland Street kitchen,” he says.
Lessons learnt
There were moments last year when it was overwhelming for Diliberto to manage Ladles of Love. However, it was during that intense time that he learnt he could only focus on the present.
“Otherwise you become too overwhelmed and you shut down. You know, it’s like.. if you use too much memory on a computer, it stops. It’s the same.”