thoughts from volunteers and mission teams!

the infocus mision team at the very 'country
club' that shana speaks of....

living in the day to day 24/7 world of the village of hope is an awesome experience and it's amazing to think that our small actions are having a huge impact in our community. we are obviously aware of the plight of the poor, we work with them each and everyday, however there are days when we forget that we still live in a very parallel universe, on one side are 'the haves' and on the other side are 'the have not's'.

we are blessed to be able to host volunteers at the village of hope, these come in all shapes and sizes, they can be individuals who have felt the call to serve for three months or more, or can be larger groups of short term mission teams, mainly coming from churches who are linked to the wider foundation.

it's interesting to watch the dynamics of these teams as they see for themselves the impact of our work via our various missions in our town and have an opportunity to meet the people we serve, it's also interesting to watch each individual as God moves them as they spend time with us.

we do try to give a broader view of our work on this blog but it's always good to read how other people see things during their time with us. over the last few weeks we have hosted a couple of mission teams, one from dallas and the other from the infocus church in augusta, georgia, who kept a blog about their time with us, we would encourage you to read their blog by clicking here and to see the things that impacted them during their time with us.

one of our longer volunteers, shana cox, has also been busy blogging and her latest post really picks up on the plight of our sports mentors, we are sure that you will be as moved as we were when we read this well constructed post so please sit down grab a coffee and or a tissue and follow this link to her blog and her post entitled 'opposite hillsides'.

we want to thank these teams and individual people for the impact they made and the skills that they shared with us.....it really does make a difference.

November News

With only a few weeks until the end of the year we are packing in as much as we can before the country slows for the summer holidays. Sports Saturdays, music concerts, home visits, mission teams, budget meetings!!!!...We are actually looking forward to a slightly quieter time over Christmas!

Perhaps some of our most exciting news is that two children who used to be part of our Village of Hope family now have a new family! They have been adopted as brother and sister to a wonderful American family. It is our first international adoption and is such a turn around of prospects for these little ones compared to when these two first arrived with us. Read all about their new family journey and the process of international adoption via their blog here: http://garrardpartyof7.wordpress.com/. We are going to miss these two terribly but are SO over-the-moon for their new family!

Fun in the sun

Children’s Unit
The children’s unit continues to be busy with seven children under the age of six! This includes a five-week-old baby which is keeping everyone on their toes. It is amazing being able to watch these little children grow and develop during their time at Village Hope. Watching our 17-month-old as she starts to take her first steps, holding cautiously on to the furniture, every now and then daring to let go. Our two and a half year old boy is talking more and more every day, saying something different each day. He is actually teaching us Afrikaans! Our 15-month-old boy, who has battled with infection since he arrived in July, is doing extremely well. His skin is now a lot clearer, he is getting stronger and with the assistance of some exercises given to us by the Occupational Therapist his muscles have loosened and he is now able to hold his own bottle and put things to his mouth which he could not do a week ago! It is lovely to see him playing and having fun and not feeling the pain or discomfort.

Being able to support our children in their development is a privilege but it is also an amazing opportunity to be able to work with the children’s parents and families, supporting and helping to build their relationship with their child and working towards a place of permanency for the children (ideally with family members). We have been looking this month at the possibility of some of the children going home for Christmas. A family member of our three-year-old boy has stated she would like him to stay with her for the whole of the Christmas period. This has been really exciting. She has already been up to visit him and even brought his older brother along. The brothers had not seen each other since he was admitted to Village of Hope and watching them play together was a lovely sight. We hope we can continue to support the family in building and maintaining a relationship between the brothers.

Sports
With the weather finally taking a turn for the better (!), our sports outreach program has really been growing. We are seeing huge increases in numbers across our seven clubs, and believe we are now reaching upwards of 250 children over the age of nine, and at least 100 under this age each week! To celebrate the dedication and commitment of those who attend our clubs each week, on Saturday 2nd November, we held a Sports Saturday event at the Elgin Country Club. Over 160 kids joined us for the morning of soccer and netball tournaments, which was blessed with amazing weather. Thanks to our brilliant sports mentors and other volunteers, the day ran smoothly, the standard of competition was high and most importantly, a lot of fun was had by all. It is clear to see from photos of the day how much the event meant to our kids; for many of them, just being able to play on grass rather than stones and glass is a blessing, not to mention being given a kit, having proper goalposts and a post-match meal. These pictures are indeed worth a thousand words! For a more in-depth report of the day, and more photos, click here.

Our sports outreach program would not be able to run without the hard work and dedication of our 15 sports mentors. Most of them are still at school, and yet they devote a large amount of time to running the sports clubs in their communities each week – some of them come every day! Though we are not able to pay them for their time and invaluable work, we have recently started to pay them in kind with a weekly food parcel. We hope that this small token will be able to give them and their families some support and thank them for all they do for us.

Other News:
Mission Teams
This month we are hosting two mission teams. We’ve already had the pleasure of meeting a team from Trinity Church in Dallas, a team of 12 including three families. Although their time here was brief (just four days!) we managed to fit in a lot and they were very helpful with helping us to repair the roof at the home of one of our discharged children as well as doing lots of sorting and sanding some of the wooden walkways around out volunteer accommodation. Next week we are expecting the second team, from InFocus, Augusta. These are a team of 15! Five are returning for a repeat visit and we know they are all hard workers! –We are planning to make the most of their week here and have lots of jobs planned out for them to do as long as the weather plays along.

Concerts
Our first Hope@PaulCluver concert of the season took place earlier this month. Suzanne Vega was the artist and there was a fabulous turn out. Although we don’t benefit much financially from this particular event (as it was organised by a third party), we were able to expose our organisation to around 1000 people over the course of the two shows, which, in itself, is a wonderful opportunity. At the end of the month on Saturday 30th we are holding the Hope Music Festival which is a fun-filled day for the family with wonderful music and more. It is also the event we use to mark and celebrate World AIDS Day – an annual day which is particularly close to our hearts. Tickets are selling well so we are looking forward to seeing a good crowd there.

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 accepted. Thank you!

We also have job openings for specific long-term volunteer roles. Please visit the volunteering section on our website for full details.

help from our friends from dallas

clearing the old tin roof

last week we hosted our first major mission team in the new short term volunteers accommodation, the teams who had used it before were mainly couples or families so it was good to see that the building held up and was enjoyed by the guys from dallas.

during the week they helped us with some jobs around the village of hope, sanding down the new board walks, chopping up wood to ensure we have enough dried for next winter, sorting donations and playing with the children in the unit. they were also able to help out with our community work, planning and running our rainbow smiles support group, assisting at our sports outreach and making house visits with our thembacare home based careworkers, they also joined us for our weekly thembacare service which was a joy to behold.

after the installation of the new roof..

on friday the men helped to put a sail sheet onto one of our discharged children's homes (see photos) which was a real blessing to him and his grandmother and at lunchtime they joined us on the soup run and prayed for the soup given out to the creches and children in the community.

it was a blessing to know this team and we pray that they will continue to be a help to our other thembalitsha projects that they are visiting this week, we hope they will make as much of an impact at those projects as they did with us in grabouw.

an amazing sports saturday

last saturday we held another of our amazing sports saturday's where we hosted over 160 children who joined us at the elgin country club on what was a very sunny and happy day, we therefore firstly need to thank God for the provision of the good weather, the finances and abilities that each of our team has which enables us to run an event as big as this.

the children who came are part of our sports outreach clubs which run every term time weekday afternoon, weather permitting, in seven different areas around grabouw and it was a real pleasure to see the joy and excitement on their little faces as we met them at each bus pick up points with an expectation of a morning playing sports.

the day is a celebration of the children's commitment to our weekly clubs and is a place where they can show us the skills that they have learnt on the sports pitch as we organise an under 11 and over 11 soccer (association football for all those living in europe!) and netball competitions throughout the morning. however during this time together we are able to see the life skills, and even the health awareness, which we teach at each club, come to the fore, where both teamwork, sharing, communicating, courage and even patience with others is evident as we split the boys and girls into mixed clubs enabling them to work with others as they seek to win the prize!

the event isn't without its complications, just to get 160 children to the event involves early morning bus journey's as we pick every child up from around the various formal and informal settlements of grabouw, but it doesn't start there as there are so many jobs that need to be completed to ensure that this runs as smoothly as possible, from delivering and installing the 12 soccer and netball goals and setting up the pitches on the friday afternoon, to sorting 160 shirts and shorts to ensure that every player feels like a premiership star, to cooking the hotdogs and delivering them on time, it has taken a while but the preparation that is undertaken by the 'sports outreach team' ensures that the day runs like a well oiled machine and enormous thanks is sent to them from me (tim!).


during the morning we played over 20 ten minute soccer games and held a netball tournament which was attended by over 40 girls, the biggest yet!, each child was part of a team which was managed by either one of our sports mentors (peer educators) or a willing volunteer, no names but you know who you are, these managers make the children feel really important, with fair play and encouraging teamwork being the main elements to a successful manager at these events.

we could continue to write about the amazing time we had but we know that sometimes pictures speak louder than words therefore we have placed as many photos as possible which we do hope capture the spirit of the event and shows the joy that a morning of sport can bring to some of the poorest children in our communities.