Children’s Unit
The unit continues to be a hive of activity! Recently one little girl contracted chicken pox and now she has mumps (poor thing!) but she seems very unaffected by it all considering and with the provision of some new walking sticks (sent from England) she is making wonderful progress, she is now able to stand unaided and this is quite remarkable given the fact that the doctors had told us that she would never walk!!! Obviously it is impossible to stop these viruses spreading in a unit full of kids who are always at close quarters but (thank the Lord) it seems that none of the other children have contracted it!
We are always thankful in these situations that the children are in our care when they are sick with these kinds of illnesses rather than in a more typical community environment where it is harder to manage and the likelihood of a child getting seriously ill (especially and HIV positive child) is increased.
The kids have been spoilt with lots of visitors and wonderful, loving volunteers over the past few weeks, which they have very much enjoyed and the volunteers have also been helping Maz to a huge sort and tidy so everything is looking extremely organised for now – not a puzzle piece out of place!
Sports
To celebrate national womens day our friends at Solid Rock organised their annual Soccer (football) tournament in the town of Worcester which sits around one hour north of Grabouw, although its winter here the weather was beautiful as Josh took 8 of our sports mentors in our mini bus to represent the Village of Hope, as usual the boys behaved impeccability and it's a real pleasure to offer them these simple opportunities to break away from the daily grind of life in the informal areas of Grabouw.
You may remember last year that the boys were unbeaten in 7 games but this year they performed even better winning 11 and drawing one of their 12 games. Our goalkeeper won the 'keeper of the tourament' award and one of the outfield players once again won the 'player of the tournament' award, a feat he completed last year as well....we want to congratate our sports mentors on their performance and for the wonderful work they do day in day out week in week out via our sports outreach into the community, these guys really are true hero's to us and their peers who they share life with.
We were also blessed by the visit our the teachers and pupils from the Aylesbury Grammar School who were in South Africa on a rugby tour, one of their teachers, Gary Ramsbottom (or Sir as he likes to be called!) attends one of our supporting churches in England and it was great to be able to welcome him and his students for an afternoon of fun at one of our sports outreaches. It was also a nice surprise for Josh Houltrum as he is an 'old boy' of the school so for him to be able to show some of his peers, who are only a few years younger than him, the work that he has been doing over the last year was a pleasure for him.
The school raised several thousand Rand and bought out some much needed extra kit, training bibs, balls, cones etc, which was a real blessing and we will ensure that we use the funds to benefit more children over the next weeks and months as the outreach grows from strength to strength.
Rainbow Smiles –HIV support group for adolescents
You might remember in our last newsletter how we had discovered that a girl from our HIV support group was defaulting on her meds. We found that the reason she was choosing not to take them was because of the sheer amount of pills and how hard they were to swallow. Over the last couple of months our fabulous social worker, Emma, has been able to walk with this girl and her family and assist by taking her to the ARV clinic. This has resulted in finding a different type of ARV that can be taken as one pill. This is wonderful as this pill is much easier to take but just goes to prove that this kind of support is really vital for teenagers who don’t necessarily know who else to go to with their issues and often don’t know where to go to find out about their options.
The Rainbow Smiles group is taking a break for a few weeks whilst Emma takes a well-deserved break and visits family back in the UK.
Other News:
Volunteers:
We’ve had a busy time will volunteers and really welcomed the support from Shae and Aubrei (from the USA) and Polly (from the UK) who’ve just been so fantastic with the kids. Those three girls have recently finished serving here, but we were very pleased to have Nakitta and her friend Bex arrive who are volunteering with us for a few weeks. In fact, Nakitta was one of the first volunteers to come to Village of Hope when it opened and was quite bowled over by the change that has taken place within the project since her last visit. Both Nakitta and Bex work in education in the UK so they are also very natural with the children and have been helping to update their developmental charts.
Sandwiched between these sets of girls was a huge mission team from #10Days – an initiative of Every Nation churches in the USA – they came to help on the project and made a huge difference by helping to clear a lot of dead wood from our woodland and turn it into woodchips for the garden areas. Sadly it was very soggy work as the rain came to visit along with them!!! We also received an impromptu visit from a American couple who Tim and Maz bumped in to on the beach one weekend!
Finally, we have to say a special thank you and goodbye to Josh Houltram who has just finished his second stint volunteering with us. Josh coordinated the sports outreach programme whilst he was here, developed a great rapport with the sports mentors and will be sorely missed.
Mandela Day:
Here in South Africa a special day is set aside to encourage volunteering. The idea is to spend 67 minutes of time on that day volunteering (representing 67 years of Nelson Mandela’s service towards the people of South Africa). You may have read on our blog but we received visits and donations from the wonderful folks at Imperial Logistics and Shoprite, The Aleit Group, Pyjamas and Jam, and Appletiser too. The children from Applewood Preparatory reliably made soup and sandwiches which they make year in and year out and we were able to bless our sports mentors with some wonderful home-cooked food in their bellies as a result. We are so SO grateful to have been recognised by so many different groups of people!!
Other Visits:
We’ve also been treated to a visit from AVCC Old Age Home who came to spend some time with the children as well as our board of directors from South Africa and Pastor Joe from the USA board!! It’s always great to know that the people who are working on are behalf are keen to see what’s going on at the coalface!
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!
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