its all about the training...

pierre shares some info on the detailed training document

we are in the middle of our winter school holiday season at the moment and for our sports outreach team this is normally a time for some much needed rest. however this year we wanted to make the most of the time that we have with our sports mentors, who are all very enthusiastic young people who are still in school, so this was the ideal time to 'up skill' them with some new training and ideas around how we deliver our programme and engage with the local children who attend our daily clubs

some of the team in their new jersey kits and boots!

since starting our sports outreach in 2008 we have based our programmes around the already existing ubabalo soccer programme, which was created for the 2010 world cup, with some tweaks by our volunteers and dutch students over the last few years, however more recently we have been building great relationships with one of the guys who created the original ubabalo sports programme.

therefore it was a true blessing to have pierre and three of his team come up and join us at the elgin country club, which provided a splendid backdrop, to the two days of training and giving us new material which will hone our outreach to the 250 or so children who attend our clubs.

it was all a little daunting for our sports mentors who were encouraged to show off their existing skills on the soccer pitch and deliver a new training session, which we had prepared in the classroom via some team building and interactive video, to the group whilst receiving some 360 degree feed back on the things they did well and those things that they perhaps needed to work on, but they

it was a time for them to bond together as a team, have fun and receive some goodies which we had been saving up for such a time as this. we must thank franny black for the tracksuits which we gave out on the second day as well as lance and travis who will be delighted to know that the soccer boots which they bought over from canada were so well received by the mentors.....thanks guys.

friendly but challenging encouragement from mal

we get the feeling that mal enjoyed the wonderful
scenery that surrounds us here in the
western cape!

as you will have read in june's newsletter we have welcomed barbara wood back onto our team and she will be followed in quick succession by josh (a young man from the aylesbury area), emma (a returning volunteer) and shana (who arrives slightly later in august) and we will cover those arrivals in a future post.

today however we want to express our heart felt thanks to mal calladine who visited us from england for a short but very exciting and challenging week last week.

myself and maz have known mal since his days leading the emerging generation stuff at the new wine conferences at the bath and west showground and we have kept in touch to be inspired, confronted and encouraged, even during his time in america, he is certainly a key part in our spiritual journey and is someone who has walked the path that led us to come serve in south africa.

we always make a point of touching base with mal when we have our annual home visits to england and have often chatted around him making time to come visit and impart wisdom to our small team at the village of hope and this was realised as he spent a crazy busy week with us last week. we did enjoy some 'down time' in cape town and franschhoek at the start and end of his stay but mal's main focus was to spent some time watching us as a team.

this 'team watching' meant that he played with the children in the children's unit, came out for some sports outreach, visited community members and engaged with our thembacare staff at our wednesday afternoon service, he also spent time with our local pastors, niel and frank, which was very helpful. he then took time with us both as individuals and as team where he led some workshops around the five fold ministry and some 'up, in and out' stuff that we had enjoyed so much many years ago. we were certainly blessed to receive his teaching, insight and God given wisdom as a team and it seemed right as we look to the next stage of the development of the village of hope.

we want to thank him for making the looooong trip down for such a short time and are looking forward to seeing how our team will move forward with some of the things he left us with after the school break, where both rob and emily along with mel are enjoying some much needed rest, and we are excited to see how the new volunteers will engage with refocused team!

June News

Well the building works continue! Although the children’s unit is now complete there is still a lot of remodeling to do. The house where Tim and Maz were staying is becoming the long-term volunteer accommodation and Tim and Maz are going to be moving into what was the old volunteer’s building but will now be a flat for them as well as some offices. We’ve also been able to get the walkway completed around Ukuquala 2 so that short-term volunteers can get around their house without getting stuck in a bog!

The children and House Moms have been able to remain warm and cosy in their new unit and are getting to grips with the new layout. They feel much happier and secure in this new environment – We have stronger doors and locks and also have a security guard on night watch.

We are now on the Department of Heath’s schedule for monthly visits from an Occupational Therapist. This is a fantastic new extra we are able to offer the children in our care. The therapist will be training up the House Moms on specific exercises and routines that they can put in place for the children. We already have some new movements we can do with the little girl who is struggling to walk from this first visit so we are looking forward to seeing improvements!

Sports

With the winter weather setting in our sports programme has been a bit sporadic. We’ve had A LOT of rain already and any wet weather stops play because the kids don’t have nice warm houses or hot baths to go to after a session. The club in Iraq is proving particularly challenging due to the lack of pitch (because the municipality have reclaimed it for building works).

Other News

Volunteers -
We’ve just waved goodbye to our most recent Dutch students. Marlise was our social work student and Eric our sports student. Once again we’ve been very blessed by these two and we are sad to see them go but excited for what they will do next. We’ve also been able to say hello to Barbara Wood. This is her third time with us, this time with a commitment of a year! We are so excited to have her back and know she is going to be a fabulous addition to the team. She is already getting stuck in, using her background in catering to coach the House Moms. By next month we will also have another returning volunteer, Emma Podmore, who is a trained social worker and will be able to pick up where Marlise has left off.

Shannon, our volunteer from the USA has also asked to stay longer so is extending her stay to at least December. She is now our in-house worship leader extrordinaire and we’ve also got her coordinating our weekly HIV support group for adolescents, Rainbow Smiles. She is doing a great job and really investing in the kids.

Get #Active4Hope –
You may have seen in our blog posts earlier this month about the new #Active4Hope campaign. If you didn’t you can read more about it here. You can choose how far you get involved in it but if you would like to sign up to some sporting events organised by us then we’ve got two suggestions for you: Go The Distance For Hope and Cycle To The Sea. Check out our Facebook page for all the details.

Hope@PaulCluver-
This is another initiative which is able to happen thanks to the generous folk at Paul Cluver Wines which is a local wine estate. Please see here for more info: (www.paulcluver.com) We are so excited about this opportunity and any profits made will come directly to us and our sister project here in Grabouw, ThembaCare Grabouw. Emily is in charge of organising the venue from now on so she is going to be a busy bee!

How You Can Help
We are never short of ideas on how you can help us out!!!!
• Become a regular monthly giver - Regular givers are like gold dust to us!!!
• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise R10000s with enough enthusiasm!
• Pray – need we say more?!

For more information contact us fundraiser@thembalitsha.org.za


Volunteering
We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff here in South Africa. It can be a fantastic way to give (and receive!) However, we do have some criteria you have to meet in order to apply. For more information on volunteering for Thembalitsha please check out our website or email us at volunteer@thembalitsha.org.za.

Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been acce

a helping hand (near and far)

well, we have been extremely busy over the past weeks so apologies for the intermittent posts! we are still trying to get the building works finished which seem to be taking forever!

wood for our mentors before the rains came

and then the rains came

from our previous post you will have read that winter is starting to set in and with it comes stormy weather and rain. even a dusting of snow on the mountains! although the snow looks pretty, these harsher weather conditions make life in the township even more challenging than usual.

helping with a sports mentors new roof

as always we do our best to go the extra mile at this time of year, whether it’s organising extra soup to be provided to some local creches or donating scrap wood from our recent building projects that can be used by our faithful sports mentors as fire fuel. with such overwhelming need in this community it’s very easy to get distracted from our ‘day job’ (?) and consider setting up a soup kitchen or start another equally worthy project…but we have to remain focused on what we are already doing and build on that, trusting that God will fill in where we cannot. we cannot always do more… 

however, if you feel like you DO have room in your busy schedule to do more then we’ve made it really easy for you to help to restore hope through Thembalitsha wherever you are! 

the clever bods (yes, we have a few believe it or not!) in our marketing team have come up with a wonderful plan... it’s called #Active4Hope and it is very easy to do!

1.      get active:

run, cycle, walk, row, jump, skip, craft, sew, dance, make music…..whatever you love to do you can create awareness for our cause and be #Active4Hope.

2.      wear:

they’ve got a very smart t-shirt to go with this (thanks to mel who designed this for us) which you can download and print onto your preferred white t-shirt. the idea that you wear this shirt whenever you are active and become a walking (or running, crafting, rowing etc) billboard for us! (download it here)

3.      join or enter:

lisa modeling the new active4hope tee shirt

to take this concept further you can even decide to enter an event and fundraise for us too or create a social or training club where each member of the group wears the shirt for meetings/training sessions.

4.      tweet:

we just ask one favour, that you tweet us (@thembalitsha using hashtag #Active4Hope) and send us a pic of how you are being #Active4Hope to keep us informed of what you are up to!

if you need to be led by example then look no further than the wonderful lisa baldy who’s doing a number of sporting events for us over the course of the year. she is the first to own an #Active4Hope t-shirt and has raised nearly £500 for us already. also krissy clark has began a cycle group to train for events in south Africa called ‘a freakin’ cycle’. they are sure to be famous throughout the western cape of south africa before too long!

we hope that this will be the beginning of an online movement and we can build a whole community of people who are joined together in being #Active4Hope.

by doing this one simple thing, you can make a difference wherever you are in the world and whatever you do! be inspired!

The Power of Community

Soupa! - Boys about to get soup from Shannon and Rob

It’s truly been the Cape of Storms the past few days. We’ve had buckets of rain here, so much so we have lots of unofficial ‘water features’ springing up around the Village of Hope and I keep thinking that some people would pay a lot of cash to have one of those in their garden!

In this awful weather it’s, once again, those with the least that suffer the most. Unfortunately we don’t have the materials or money to fix every leaky roof but we thought that we would ask the local farm stall to see whether they would be happy to supply some extra soup in this extreme weather. Peregrine and Orchard Farmstalls, the two cafes in our town, already supply us with soup every Friday and here they are happy to go further because we have established a good relationship with them and they have recognised that they are in a position to help. Thanks to them we could bless many, wet, cold and hungry people who at least, if nothing else, can have something wholesome in their stomach today.

As the years go by we have been worked hard to establish good relationships with many local businesses who now happily go out of their way to help us because they acknowledge that we are making some kind of difference.

This year, we are blessed with another fantastic opportunity from local wine estate, Paul Cluver. They have an amazing amphitheatre in the woods which they are rebranding and basically handing over to us. The potential of this venue – now called Hope@PaulCluver - is infinite and I will be working with them to maximise every bit of it – although we will be doing this slowly to make sure we do it well ;-) Last year it was Hope Festival, now it’s Hope Theatre! You can read more detail about how it works on our website here.

We are so thankful for all the people in Elgin and Grabouw who are helping us to serve this community by supporting us with their skill and resources. I could list lots of people on here but I am worried I might miss someone out and that would be bad!!

I am confident that by sharing our skills, time and resources, we can shape our community for the better making a more dramatic difference to the vulnerable and marginalised in our town. If we get it right we could be a blue print for other similar communities in South Africa!

 ...Perhaps this time next year, when the weather gets bad again, even if we can’t do it, there will be someone able and willing and on hand to fix those leaky shack roofs!

Emily