the village of hope seeks to help children infected or affected by hiv, aids and tb in two different ways: we have a 9 bed children's unit to support those infected by hiv and aids and we also run a community-based sports and lifeskills outreach in the informal settlements and squatter camps each afternoon.

this blog has been set up to allow the key members of the team at the village of hope to share their thoughts, photos and experiences as we work in the community of grabouw in south africa

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

a flying visit....

we always love to welcome people to visit our various thembalitsha projects around the western cape, be it for a few days, a couple of weeks or even a longer term placement however we don't have many people who come for just a couple of hours but on monday it was my pleasure to be able to show brendon around two of our projects, thembacare grabouw and the village of hope.

i love to take people to see the work we are involved with in our local community, many of you will know that the village of hope is much more than our 9 bed children's unit and that thembacare serve more than the 7 people that stay in their inpatient unit receiving hospice care from our amazing team.

our work extends far beyond those boundaries, like the 7 sports outreach clubs we run each and every weekday afternoon during school term, or the rainbow smiles support group which meets every friday, along with our home based palliative care team who visit over 450 patients in the community who are living with HIV...we even venture out into the local businesses providing HIV, TB and blood sugar testing via our mobile unit, which is pulled around by my dependable bakkie.

during brendons short visit to grabouw he was able to pick up some of the sights, sounds, feelings and cultures that make up our wonderful little town, he was able to visit some of the poorest of the poor whilst still seeing the hope that is being provided by the likes of thembalitsha through our outreach programmes.

please visit brendons blog post, entitled, 'postitive about cape apples', to read what he thought about his short time with us, obviously things aren't always what they seem but i think brendon has picked up on the key reasons we do what we do here in south africa, i hope you will be encouraged and also challenged by his post.


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