Hellos and Goodbyes (February 2015)

Children’s Unit 

Back to school!

Over the Christmas period, the children went on bike rides, swimming, to the beach, played games, made crafts, and lots of exciting stuff. We enjoyed a big Christmas day altogether which the children loved! They where given some presents, and it was fun watching their excitement opening them and being so grateful for all the things they got. When school started back, two of our dear ones started big school – they looked so grown up in their uniforms!

Also during the holiday period, we discharged five of our children and had three new arrivals who came to stay with us for a short time. We said goodbye to three brothers who went back to their grandmother who was now in a place where they felt she could look after all three children. We also said goodbye to a baby boy who came to us at two months old after nearly dying in the hospital. His mother died shortly after giving birth, but his father remained very involved during the year he was with us. This tiny baby who came to us so small left fat and healthy to live with his grandmother in the Eastern Cape. The last discharge was a little girl who had been with us for 14 months. Her mother sadly died whilst the little girl was with us. Her grandmother came from the Eastern Cape to spend a week with us getting to know her grandchild and learning to administrate her medication. She has now taken the little girl to live with her in the Eastern Cape.

We were also able to provide care for a new arrival: a young boy who had become very ill due to not taking his meds. He had developed TB and needed somewhere to build his strength so he stayed with us for three weeks. His mother was also unwell and each time she was in hospital the people caring for him did not give him the meds. Due to this referral from the clinic, we were able to get social workers involved who are able to monitor the situation, and the mother knows now that if she has to go to hospital she can call the social workers who will help support her.

Rainbow Smiles

Farewell pool party for Tim and Maz

We kicked off the holiday period by having a great Christmas party with a braai and a water slide! The children particularly loved racing down the slippy slide. Following the party, we began a very long break and have only just started back at the tail end of January when we began the new year by having a pool party to say goodbye to Tim and Maz.

We have added two more children to the club, which brings the total to 17 children – an amazing number for us. Unfortunately, we have had to say goodbye to our trusted volunteer Johan, but we have gained Greg from France who is helping at the club. Starting this week, we look forward to two students from Holland joining our team! Due to the need for more helpers, we have moved the meeting time to Wednesdays, which we’re hoping works out with the earlier school time.

Lastly, one of our children who has become young leader has been able to re-start his schooling at community college after being out of school for over two years. This is a massive achievement for him, and we are incredibly proud of him. He is 17 years old and left school after only completing Grade 6 (primary school level). If he works hard and continues with his adult education, he will be able to matriculate by the time he is 20 years old.

Sports

A day at the beach with our sports kids

Village of Hope sports leaders Greg and Emma combined forces with our community sports mentors to take 80 kids to the beach at the end of December to celebrate the end of 2014 and the summer holiday. Two busloads of kids got a day of fun in the sun and swimming in before school started back! Then in January, Village of Hope collaborated with local Strand-based charity Solid Rock to do a full week of 9am-5pm athletic activities and biblical life coaching at Groenberg School in Grabouw. More than 175 kids attended per day - an amazing turn out, and a lot of fun for the kids and our staff alike. Now well into February, we are excited to return to our scheduled daily sports programme in different pockets of the Grabouw community. Word is spreading amongst the kids, and we expect to be operating with full volume by next week!

summer time fun...

katie and her babies

last week the local schools closed for summer so we have had a bit more time to spend with the children in the unit who are already crawling off the walls and proving to be a bit of a handful to our dedicated house moms, who are also nearing the end of the year and having to plan and prepare for their own family Christmas.

katie has been preparing some morning time activities for the older children but as we celebrated another public holiday on tuesday we decided to take all the children, house moms and volunteers to the local beach for an afternoon of fun. looking back it seems that we have done this each and every 'heritage day' and it's amazing to see the children's reactions as they get time to play in the sand and swim in the sea.

greg's castle

they are such a pleasure to be with and i think every child dipped their toes in the sea with some taking it a little bit further by actually trying to body board!.....greg made a huge and complex sand castle trying to replicate the french island setting of mont saint-michel but one of our more challenging (in a very sweet way) boys had other plans and duly knocked it down before greg managed to finish the moat.

moms it the beach!

beach soccer

on wednesday morning it was the turn of the sports outreach children to have some time at the beach, we work with over 450 children each week so it was a bit of a mission trying to plan for all of them to attend the day that they look forward to all year, however as around 250 of the children are under the age of nine there was no way that we were going to put ourselves under pressure to take them (there will be a 'next time' for those children as they grow up into our senior clubs), so that left around 200 who would have loved to have come.

happy kids

in the end we booked two 60 seater buses and with the help of our sports mentors, volunteers and willing others we end up taking over 75 children from four of our daily clubs, it's always hard to chose how to run these things but as many of our children return to the eastern cape for Christmas we are confident that most of the children who remained in grabouw were able to join us.

fun times for the girls

as you can imagine looking after 75 children on a wide open beach with an inviting sea to entice them is no mean feat but we are thankful to say that none of the children ended up as shark bait and apart from a badly cut foot (which occurred as one boy stepped on a piece of discarded glass whilst playing football) everyone returned to their homes in grabouw in one piece!

greg came up with a novel idea to split the children into ten separate groups with two leaders responsible for that team, we then placed netball bibs on the children, all an array of colours so our team leaders could keep a check on the children in their group. this worked so well and i'm sure it provided the beach with a riot of colour as the children ran in and out of the sea, having the time of their lives.

a riot of colour in gordon's bay

it's always great to see the children playing and being truly free for a few hours, leaving the cares of their complex lives behind and having fun together. this is one of the day we will miss when we leave the project in february but trust that our team will continue to offer both these wonderful opportunities to both the sports outreach children and those that we care for in our 24/7 unit.

special thanks to lisa baldry for the wonderful photos!

beach days, new babies and mentors help....

happy christmas meal

house moms and our eldest girl enjoying the sea

nana on the beach!

we have been enjoying some balmy summer weather over the last week or so and fittingly after the funeral of nelson mandela on sunday the country celbrated its annual public holiday, 'the day of reconciliation' on the 16th december.

mommy maz building castles in the sand

grace with our newest baby boy

helping mentors

on the 15th we held our 'christmas dinner', which was cooked for us by barbara and my mum (tim) and on the public holiday it was a chance to take our wonderful children, our house moms and some members of the thembacare grabouw staff for an afternoon of fun and games at the local beach. the weather was great and the kids had a great time digging sandcastles and jumping in the surf.

after our sad goodbyes to two children on friday, see earlier post here, it was fantastic to be able to take in our newest child, a seven week old baby boy who has been placed with us after some very trying home circumstances.

who's got the frog eyes

the weeks seem to be flying by at the moment and although the schools have broken up we have been holding our sports outreach during the afternoons as normal, however with the mentors at a loose end in the mornings we have been able to provide them with a chance to earn some extra pocket money as they have joined us at the village of hope, clearing wood, cutting grass and generally tidying up around the place.

its been great working with the mentors, they are an amazing bunch of guys, willing to learn and keen to make a difference, we are blessed to know them.

January News

The Christmas period was a wonderful time in the children’s unit. With the school children on holiday, we made the most of it and took trips to the beach when we could. We were donated a fantastically glitzy Christmas Tree by some of our neighbours who run a Christmas decoration company and that helped add some festive spirit to our usual surroundings.

We were very happy to be able to spend Christmas Day hosted by The Weigmans, a wonderful couple from our local church who opened their home to all 24 of us (including visiting family) for a beautifully relaxed day by their pool. We were able to coax the children into the water and encourage them to play with all the inflatables and just relax and have fun together. The children received some gorgeous shoeboxes full of presents from the generous folk at Operation Shoebox. As you can imagine, they were very excited.

As you may have heard, 2013 has started with a lot of tension here in Grabouw and there has been strike action this past week which has had us all on high alert. The protesting has included fires and looting and at one stage we had 200 people going past our front gate. The local farmers have been on patrol 24 hours a day trying to protect the farms and the sound of gunshot has not been unfamiliar either. It has been very disconcerting and we are trying just to keep carrying on with our usual activities but it has been tiring being alert all the time and it has been difficult to get staff in on occasions.

Obviously our major concern is for our staff and children that we work with who live in the community and are closest to all the action. We have been praying for their safety through all of this and the striking does seem to have calmed down since the beginning of the week.

Although this is happening, this week sees another one of our children take his first step into preschool. We can’t believe he is starting! – It only seemed yesterday we were looking after a 2-week-old bundle of baby!


Community Work

Sports Outreach:
Our community work took a break over the long summer holidays which gave us time to bless our sports mentors this month with a trip to Green Point stadium to watch South Africa play football against Norway. It truly was a great time for the 16 young people  and for some of them it was their first experience of the big city a quite a culture shock.


Other News

Sleigh:
Fast becoming a Village of Hope tradition, we took our make-shift sleigh around the town the Friday before Christmas. Complete with Johan as our South African Father Christmas, we towed the sleigh behind the bakkie and gave our sweets and apples to the children. Although this may seem a trivial to do for a community in such need, it really does bring a smile to everyone’s face and spread a little joy.

Volunteers:
We have been very happy to have lots of family visitors over the Christmas and New Year period and of course, we hoodwinked them into helping us out with our work whilst they were here!

We also said ‘au revoir’ to Tim Berger who served with us for all of 2013 and was a fantastic complement to the maintenance team. Tim isn’t actually leaving Grabouw but it moving on to do some other work and will still come and help us out when he has time.

Towards the end of the month we will be welcoming Shannon, from America, who is coming to serve with the other long-term volunteers and the Stuttgart Architect students will be returning for their third visit and be developing our buildings and land further – watch this space because this time there is going to be a big change!


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 (it doesn’t have to be cycling)!!!!! – 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!

Up And Coming Events
For further details check out our Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/thembalitshafoundation

Charity Single

It doesn’t matter what country you are in. Everyone can benefit from this! The fantastically generous and talented folk of up and coming British band, Being Buffalo, have released a track especially for us! And it sounds great too! We get 50% of every sale so please let your friends and family know about this! You can find the track for download here:

http://beingbuffalo.bandcamp.com/album/hope-charity-download