volunteers arrive (from buckinghamshire!)

emma in an unfortunate one legged pose alongside
josh in his sad football top, anyone spot the team?

as you will be aware the opportunities that arise for volunteers to come and serve with us via the thembalitsha foundation are wide and varied, and our local nurses, house moms, care workers and sport mentors (of which we employ over 50 full time staff over our two projects in grabouw) are complimented by amazing people who have joined us from all around the world.

over the last few weeks this team of volunteers who serve in so many different ways here at the village of hope has grown by three, two of the those are returning to fill specific roles which we have been praying around for a long time and one is joining with the hope of extending their stay if things work out well.

emma starting as she means to go on with a
home visit in the waterwerks community

all three volunteers hail from the same part of the globe, that being a very small area based in the vale of aylesbury, in buckinghamshire, england. but they all attend different churches and have all arrived on separate journey's which is a testimony to the diversity that we have with the churches in that area (tim and maz used to live in buckinghamshire before they came to set up the village of hope!).

barbara will helping with our volunteer programme, she is a great cook and will also be supporting the house moms as they look at the menus that the children are enjoying, she also has a bent for finance so she will be involved in that area as well. emma was last with us in 2010 and since then has fully qualified as a social worker and she will be assisting maz in the complexity of our children's social cases which as a major task in itself. it's great to have these two wonderful women come back to serve with us.

on the other hand josh has committed to helping johan with maintenance around the property in the morning and will be joining the community team each afternoon as we share our lives with the children in our community via the medium of sport. josh will also be joined by seb who has been working with us for a few months now but has committed to being part of the team, abet living 'off site' and we welcome him to the ever growing family.