help with a home

around 1000 people live on a deserted mountain side in grabouw which used to be a pine plantation, this area called iraq has one standpipe and no electricity. the local municipality are currently completing some much needed work to bring basic sanitation into the area but the people living there have been asked to move their own houses to an area slightly (like 200 yards) nearer to town to be nearer to the water!...this is no mean task with no transport, tools or materials.

thembacare make frequent visits to iraq and have a number of people who they are caring for, ensuring that they continue to take their medication, one of these patients is a very sick man (in his 30's) and he was asked to move his home to the new site. we (village of hope) were asked if we could help.

as we had some willing volunteers around we made a visit to the 'home'(a small tin shack)but it was clear to see that this simple structure was in no fit state to be moved....


..what to do?...well with some funds that were donated by the Tim Berger mission team we purchased a brand new wooden home (ok we would call it a shed but to the man and his young nephew this was to provide some welcome comfort in comparison to their previous structure).

there is always a dilemma in how we best hope those in need, we face poverty and disease day in day out but there are some cases which touch your heart and therefore after long consideration we felt that we should bless this man, you should have seen the look on his face as the lorry came along with all the materials, the home was installed and we shared a smile as he stepped over the thresh hold of that 'home'.

as i said this isn't something we make a habit of doing, handouts make people reliant on charity but if you would like to help us bless more of those 'one off patients', or those who have lost a home to fire (which is also a frequent problem) just make a donation of around £600 and we will tell of more stories of hope.

(the photo shows the new home (light orange) against a backdrop of other shacks and the wonderful grabouw valley in the background)

support from sedexo

yesterday we were blessed to receive some support from the catering service delivery company sedexo who have been running a 'stop hunger' campaign from their retail/food outlets in cape town, we collected dried food from both mweb and telkom and we want to thank them for their amazing support.

we hope that this will be the first of many visits and we want to thank lee-ann and cleo who pioneered this initiative.

new boys and 10 year old returns!

today we have the very exciting news that we have been joined at the village of hope by two wonderful little boys, these brothers have been stopping at our thembacare unit in athlone and have been placed with us as we can provide longer term care. please pray for these little ones as we welcome them into our home....now with out unit full again we have 9 children living with us and 15 that we have placed back into families in the community.

the other bit of great news is that our 10 year old boy who had been in red cross children's hospital with a severe lung infection and who was on oxygen for a whole week, with the expectation that he would remain on oxygen for the rest of his life!, has arrived back with us and is once again full of beans!

thanks be to God who continues to watch over all our little ones and thanks for your support which enables us to make a real difference in these children's lives.

wholehearted....

a couple of weeks ago we welcomed charl and the rest of the everynation somerset west worship band to grabouw to film the video to their latest release....the band 'wholehearted' wanted to shoot a video in the townships and squatter camps in grabouw, for one to give their song a very powerful storyline and secondly to come and see the communities that we are working with day in day out.

proceeds from the single will come direct to thembalitsha and village of hope so please look out for it's release...you can watch the video on youtube by clicking this link or have a look at the everynation somerset west web site for release dates and photos etc.

international news exposure

news of the dutch ambassadors visit to the village of hope has reach the publication 'foreign exchange'. we hope that all this extra exposure will mean that our work will start to receive the recognition that will able us to secure the necessary funding to enable us to continue to support, develop and expand the work we are doing for children infected or affected by HIV and AIDS.

walking killi for thembalitsha

we have had some amazing volunteers join us over the last few weeks, months and now years, some have visited, some have prayed, some have written up newsletters and kept weblogs going and others have done some mad things to raise funds for our project.....these have included sky diving, head shaving, cycling of one sort or another and now amanda barton, james isherwood, atinuke williams are gonna take on the might of mount kilimanjaro...

we wish them all the best as they prepare and if you would like to give them some encouragement then please donate via their justgiving page HERE!.....bless you guys.

film preview and forthcoming book

you may remember last year that we welcomed nadia from exeko and the photographer wayne schoenfeld to the village of hope to capture the work that we and thembacare do in grabouw, see this link to that post. well we are pleased to announce that a book entitled 'footprints in the sand' and a film called 'everyday heros' are being launched. to capture a preview of the film then please follow this link to waynes website and click on the video clip at the bottom righthand side of the page.

we are so excited about this project, the film preview looks amazing and we hope that when it's launched at the international childrens hospice conference in washington DC in october that this will highlight the work that we are doing here in south africa.

40 homes burnt to ground in waterwerks

last friday night around 40 homes in the waterwerks squatter camp in grabouw were burnt to the ground. the fire, which seems to have been started by an overturned paraffin stove, swept through the area so fast, due to the high winds, that people were unable to protect their limited property and most people lost everything that they own.

the village of hope team, boosted by matt walker and the other walker boys (josh and arron) along with rob, emma podmore and jenny jiggins, were amongst the first on the scene in the morning and helped with the rebuilding of the homes....we must say that the assistance we offered we very limited and even five days after the event people are still struggling to obtain enough material to rebuild their homes.

the photo shows a blind grandmother and her granddaughter sitting in her part rebuilt home, she lost everything and you can see the remnants of her bed in the foreground!

infocus mission trip in focus

we have just said goodbye to our second mission team from the united states in as many weeks, as you will have read before we were blessed by tim berger and his team from illinois and last week we were visited by the 'infocus' team from augusta georgia.

if you want to see what mission teams get up to during their time here at the village of hope, and the experiences they have within the wider thembalitsha organisation here in grabouw then please visit their blog which they updated daily with their experiences.

visit the blog by clicking HERE and let their experiences speak for themselves.

bless those guys they were an amazing team!

village of hope makes waitrose news

we have been working at a local farm for around 6 months, running our sports outreach programme each thursday and including them in our sports saturdays. the farm provides fruit, mainly apples, to a supermarket chain in england and the work we do there has been picked up by their newsletter. see attached.