June News

The winter has certainly arrived here bringing wind, rain and even some snow on the mountains. It’s very cold and makes conditions for the poor in our community even more challenging.

Scubba diving anyone?

Children’s Unit

All the children are progressing very well and seem jolly and happy. We have an occupational therapist who comes once a month and she is very pleased with all children which proves that our wonderful House Moms are doing a grand job!

One little one in particular is a boy who’s been with us for a year. When he came to us he was just a year old and was unable to sit unsupported. Now he is meeting all his developmental mile stones which is fantastic news. The other great news we have recently been able to discharge him home. His parents have visited him constantly since his placement here and have worked well with the social workers and us. He went for a weekend visit two weeks ago and he was positively glowing when we collected him. We are always sad to say goodbye but we are also happy to know that we’ve done our best for him.

We are also further a long with the case of our six year old girl. We’ve have found a foster family for her and it now depends on the upcoming court case to see if the order will be granted so please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Sports

With the arrival of winter in South Africa this month, our sports outreach programme has suffered due to the severe weather. We’ve major storms but, when the weather has permitted, we have continued running our clubs with energy and enthusiasm.

Our ninth and most recent club continues to grow under the leadership of Aphiwe, 18, and he now mentors to over 30 children each week.

The World Cup has given us an opportunity to put on something special for the children and teenagers of Grabouw, resulting in a tournament to be held on 4th July at one of the local schools. This hundred-person event will run in tandem with the actual World Cup, allowing the children to play while keeping track of the scores in Brazil.  


Rainbow Smiles –HIV support group for adolescents

We now have 15 children at our Rainbow Smiles Club which is amazing. We seem to have more younger children being referred which is giving opportunities to our older children to support and help the younger ones. One of the new children is a child who used to stay at Village of Hope and now lives with his grandparents. It is great to see how we can continue to support our children after they are discharged and as they grow up.

This group also reminds us of the constant challenges these children face. In the last week we’ve been alerted to one girl who is purposefully defaulting on her medication – a serious issue. We are grateful that her parents wanted to confide in us and make us aware of the issue so that that we might be able to help get the situation resolved quickly preventing too much damage to her health, but also to ensuring that we support this girl with the love and care that she needs.

Other News:
The Themablitsha Big Buck$ Bike Ride
What an amazing success with a fantastic turnout! The final figures aren’t in yet but it looks like the team smashed their £5000 target and everyone enjoyed the day getting #Active4Hope! Big thanks go to the team of volunteers who worked so hard to get this event off the ground, to all the cyclists who’s blood, sweat and tears made the event as well as to all those who sponsored the athletes!!!


Volunteers:
We’ve had an unusual few weeks without any short-term volunteers but as of yesterday we’ve been able to welcome Polly from the UK who is spending 2 months of her gap year volunteering for us and next week we have Shae and Aubrei from USA coming to volunteer and assist in our school holiday sports programme so it will feel a little bit more normal again!


Gardening:
Big thanks to the team from Every Nation Somerset West who came and slaved hard on their weekend to help improve a garden at one of our long term volunteer houses. They worked like trojans and have really made the space much nicer for Rob and Emily (who are staying in the house at the moment) and for all the volunteers who will stay there after them!


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!

September News

This month is a cause for much celebration for us here at Village of Hope. Last week we received the news that our project is officially registered with the Department of Social Development. It has taken a very long time to establish with, which government department we should be registered to and what kind of facility we should be registered as. A process of over 4 years to be precise! Maz and her team have had lots of to-ing and fro-ing to do and red tape to wade though, but finally we have the piece of paper (laminated, scanned, copied and soon to be elegantly framed!) to prove that we are acknowledged by the government and officially allowed to be in operation as a 12-bed partial care facility.

What was ‘funny’ was that all the other social service organisations in town found out the result before we did. Apparently it had been confirmed a week previous to us knowing. Slightly back to front we think!

The only slightly element that took the shine of the news is that Tim and Maz weren’t here when we found out but we look forward to celebrating with them when they return from a break in the UK.

Children’s Unit
The unit has been nice and busy with lots of visits from some of the children’s parents. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, we’ve been able to send another little boy home to live with his mother (read the full story here) and another child’s mother, the girl who has difficulty walking, is being given her last chance by the social workers to prove that she wants her daughter back. She has to demonstrate this by coming to visit regularly and taking responsibility of caring for her daughter on those visits. We are hopeful that a reunification is possible for this little girl and her mother too but it has to be for the best intentions of the child.

Sports
This month has been rather frustrating for our sports team with so many afternoon clubs being postponed due to the intense storms we’ve been having. They are trying to make the best of the bad weather and using that time to sort out mountains of kit and prep for a sports Saturday they are planning in a few weeks. We are praying that the weather will be slightly more friendly by then as the children are really looking forward to a bit of healthy competition.

Other News:

Cycling:
On 13 September 12 cyclists in 2 different countries took on Thembalitsha’s cycle to the sea challenge. You can read more in ThembaCare Grabouw’s blog but we wanted to mention it because of the huge representation that came from our Village of Hope volunteers and friends. Shannon, Josh and Emma all completed the cycle here in South Africa covering 200km in three days (in awful weather sometimes) and our friends in the UK: Trefor. Dan and Cara Williams and Andy Gilbert completed the UK challenge which was to cycle to the sea, 100 miles in 1 day! Way to go guys!!!

Dancing:
Over the same weekend as the cycle, we were also given the opportunity to benefit from auction items sold at the annual Elgin Barn Dance fundraiser which is held here in Grabouw. Seeing as though most of the rest of the VoH team was off cycling, it was up to Emily to represent the project! Thankfully she didn’t have to dance too much and only had to speak on stage for a couple of minutes. Getting guests to bid on the items was a hard sell but the evening resulted in a haul of R5000 which is not to be sniffed at. Yee Hah!

Volunteers:
Our trusty past volunteer, Tyler Snelson, has popped back for a brief visit. Tyler is from Texas and has volunteered with us numerous times in the past. It’s always great to see people come back and reminds us of how big the Village of Hope family has become. We are sure he craftily planned is trip to coincide with National Braai Day (September 24)!!


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!

April News

Well, the Children’s Unit has truly been transformed at the hands of the Stuttgart University team. We now have a unit which is big enough to accommodate 15 children, a new kitchen, beautiful spacious day room space as well as a refitted bathroom and much needed treatment room. Although the team achieved a lot in a short space of time they had to leave before much of the final finishing could be done so we have been hard at work trying to maintain momentum in the hope that we can move the children in by the end of the month. It seems a long way off with still such a long snag list to complete but we are thankful that the team left some more funding to assist with this and we have been able to hire a very competent builder to assist.


We have been making the most of having our volunteers too and Shannon and the Littler Family have certainly put in the elbow grease to get the wooden floors looking super shiny! We are so thankful to the Stuttgart students who worked so hard for so long to get as much done as they could and we cannot wait to move in and be able to start filling the rooms up with children!

On top of the new children’s unit we also have some, much needed office space and meeting rooms and our short-term volunteer accommodation (Ukuqala II) which was started by last year’s team is also complete.

With all this change happening we’ve got reduced numbers of children staying with us until we have more space. Although this has been strange – we currently only have 4 children! – it has meant that each of them has been able to receive a lot more 1:1 attention from our house moms. We have really noticed an acceleration in their development, especially in the areas that they were struggling. Now one little girl can walk, a little boy can talk and the other boy and girl have increased a lot in confidence! It is very exciting to see.

Sports

The past month has seen another one of our famous Soccer Saturdays come and go. These days are always a tremendous amount of work but we know how worthwhile they are for the children who attend our weekly sports clubs. 180 children attended and had great fun.

We have also been able to bless all of our sports mentors with a new pair of trainers thanks to our lovely friend from the USA, Helen! Having the right ‘kit’ helps these dedicated guys feel appreciated and also makes it easier for them to do their jobs. Thanks Helen!

The sports mentors continue to develop into upstanding young men and women. We are so proud of them. They have really taken up the challenge and recognise their responsibility. They are a fantastic influence on the children they teach. Please keep these young people in your prayers as they lead their generation forward in this difficult and sometimes disheartening environment.

Other News:
Volunteers -
This month we said goodbye to Jacqui who has served us for the past 6 months here at Village of Hope. She has gone back to Australia and was a great help with our Rainbow Smiles HIV support group for adolescents. We wish her all the best for her next venture.

We were also very happy to say hello to the Littler family, who we mentioned earlier. David, Suzanne, Joel, Toby and Zach are friends of ours from our church back in the UK and were the guinea pigs of the new volunteer accommodation in Ukuqala II! They visited for two weeks and were a breath of fresh air and fun. They also provided us with a long snag list of things we need to sort in the new accommodation! ;-)

Fundraisers-
Congratulations to Andy Gilbert and Dave Bambury who completed the Reading Half marathon in 1h58 – most impressive! They also raised £500 for us. Thanks guys!

On top of his sporting prowess, Andy also organised a very successful music and comedy revue in Aylesbury . Long time friend of Thembalitsha and singer/songwriter, John Zealey and his band performed an electric and acoustic ser. He was also selling his latest CD with all monies going to Thembalitsha. Between John’s performances award-winning stand-up Andy Kind did a set which was well received.  Andy was also selling his book at a discounted rate. £750 was generated for Thembalitsh UK so thank you to all who were involved.

Cycle To The Sea | Date Set for September 2013 - 
We are going large with our Cycle to the Sea event this year! We will be running an event in UK and South Africa on the same day! Exciting stuff!! The date is set for 14th September so please keep your eyes peeled on the Thembalitsha facebook page for more details as our plans develop.

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!

September News

It’s less than a week to go until our fearless leaders (Tim and Maz) return from their 6 week break. We are thanking the Lord for getting us through so far without too many hiccups! Although we have had some rather frustrating technical issues with our water system (which has to go through lots of hoops, gadgets and gizmos to make it clean before it magically comes out of our tap) we are still standing!

Our trusty volunteers doing their thing!

Children’s Unit
The children have been enjoying some more pleasant weather and it makes everyone’s lives a little easier when they have opportunity to let off steam outside! They are looking forward to a short, one-week school holiday too. Let’s hope the weather is good to us then too!

Last week we had a new admission of a cute little two-year-old girl. She is settling in really well to our strange little family here and certainly is happy to hold her ground around the older children! You may have read our blog post about her but we have recently found out her mother died due to TB. It is very sad but we are hoping there is a possibility for her to be placed with her grandparents soon.

We are still rather worried about a recent decision that has been made by the courts for one of our children. It is not appropriate to divulge the detail but please pray that God protects the little girl in question throughout the process and that His will be done.

Our football pitch - perfectly flat as ever!

Sports Outreach and Community Work
Sports in the informal settlement of Iraq now has a couple of challenges. We arrived last week to find that our ‘pitch’ (and we use the term loosely in the first place) had been attacked by a digger and had huge chunks taken out of it. The boys managed to play around it but it has severely reduced the space they have to play and makes it a bit of an obstacle course! Of course, we are more worried about it than the boys! We are also battling a little bit with all the younger children who come to watch the club. There are more of them that there are children to teach. A lot of them are younger siblings of the kids who are in our club. As much as we don’t want to tell them to go away – especially when we know they don’t really have anything to do or anywhere to go to – it is really distracting and makes it hard for the mentors to teach the sessions. When we have the manpower we can offer a babysitting service but this isn’t always possible and quite often there is a lot of in-fighting amongst the little ones. We need to pray about a good solution! They are so cute and need love and attention too but we can’t always do everything!


Other News
Volunteers:
This month we have been able to welcome two lovely all-american gels to the team. Kathryn and Martha are both from Texas and heard about our work through our church links there. They have been fantastic at getting stuck in and are great self-starters which is always helpful when we are short-handed. Both the girls will be with us for a couple of months and it’s really nice to have some refreshment to the team again.


Cycle To The Sea:
Our terrific team of 10 who cycled themselves silly for us managed to raise in excess of £2500. When we asked them for a report on their efforts this is what we received:

Too tired for prose but in brief my report is:
-          Great success
-          Splendid route
-          Stunning weather
-          Perfect lunch stop
-          Good crack
-          Varied fitness!
-          Very welcome overnight
-          Impressively generous donations
-          Most are keen to repeat next year


Thanks so much guys. We appreciate every penny. And to hear that they want to do it AGAIN makes our hearts swell!

You can still add to their total here: www.justgiving.com/CycleToTheSea2012


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!


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


Wholehearted New Album Released 1st October

Our friends at Wholehearted are launching their new album, Fearless Love, which will be available on iTunes very soon. If their previous offering is anything to go by then you are not going to want to miss out on this. It also includes Hope Is Here which was written with Thembalitsha in mind! Check it out! http://wholehearted.co.za/

HOPE 2012

Top SA bands are going to be making some noise for us this World AIDS Day (1st December).

If you are going to be any where near Cape Town then diarise it and get your tickets before they sell out!

They are available on computicket now. A steal at R150 a ticket. Please support us and get the word out to your friends/family/school. The more people who know about this event the better!


Get your tickets at www.hope.org.za/2012

cycle to the sea

tref, harry, dan, chris, andy, lucy, lucy, robin, cara and andy

dan and harry off on their 3 day trip

as i write this post 9 intrepid cyclists will be on their way to brighton on the 2012 cycle to the sea, raising funds for the village of hope and the wider thembalitsha foundation.

myself and maz rose early to see the guys off from thame clock tower at 8am this morning, sending the team off on their 100 mile ride from west to east, the day has been extremely warm and we are trusting that they have enough water with them for what will be a hot ride.....

...two of the riders, dan and harry, are actually gonna be riding for 3 days, attempting to cover 300 miles in a round trip via brighton, southampton back to thame, if you would like to sponsor them, thus donating to the work that we are doing in south africa then click on this link to their justgiving site......or if you would like to support the core team of tref, andy, cara, lucy, robin chris and chris' friend andy then please click on this link

thanks guys and we hope to have some good news very soon that you completed the trip successfully.

the last we saw of them!

August News

Well we have certainly been battening down the hatches this month. The storms that have been blowing through here have been rather wild. We’ve had trees blowing down all over the property (thankfully not near buildings or people) and anything that has not been tied down has been found in a foreign place. Perhaps the biggest casualty on the farm has been a pre-fabricated shed, fondly known as The Cabin. We use it to store lots of bits and bobs and, though it has never been water-tight, it has always been good for some kind of storage……Not so now! After the wind and rain this weekend the poor old cabin is as flat as a pancake and the roof is nowhere to be seen! Thankfully Mel and her friend as well as two of our fabulously multi-talented House Moms, were on hand to move the items quickly out of the wet weather. Those girls do have some muscles on them! Now it’s down to the maintenance team to sort out somewhere to store all the homeless items and clear up the mess!

We are having a giggle amongst the team because the cabin episode happened the night that Tim and Maz, our trusty Project Managers, left for a six week, much needed holiday! Let’s hope by the time they return we have managed to keep everything together. We have done it before so we can do it again!! Please keep us in your prayers!

Children’s Unit
With all the wintry weather the children and House Moms have been keeping safely tucked indoors a lot of the time but we are not short of news as ever!

We are most excited to welcome a new little one to the Village of Hope family. As with many of the children here, they all have their story to tell, but we are just happy that we can offer some relief and some loving care whilst he is with us. Along with a new child we have also been able to receive Marlise, a social work student from the HAN university in Holland. Marlise is going to be with us for a year and is already getting stuck in!

As well as a new child and new student we also have a lovely shiny new people carrier! Thanks to a lot of hard work and fundraising we finally had enough money to buy a Hyundai H1. It is not brand new but it is the newest vehicle we have ever been able to purchase and will be a lot more reliable than the old VW combi we had previously. We are doing our best to keep it looking new for as long as possible. The maintenance team has created an nice dry area for us to park it so it is less likely to get sandy and muddy with all the bad weather we have been having. The kids use it to go to school each day and we are able to use it for our sports clubs and Rainbow Smiles on Fridays.

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We’ve tried to keep sports clubs as regular as possible despite the weather. Now that we have reliable mentors it allows us to have more flexibility because if the weather is bad they can choose to hold their particular clubs on drier days whereas in times gone by we just didn’t have the capacity to be so flexible.

We also now have our next Dutch students. Yorram and Anna are fantastic and already proving their dedication to our cause by going beyond their brief. They even helped with babysitting in the Children’s Unit whilst we held a staff meeting – and those of you who have volunteered before and helped with that know what kind of dedication that is! It is so exciting to see the relationships developing between us and the HAN university and we know that every student we receive from them is an asset to us.

We are also very excited to be able to re-start our club in the Rooidakke area. We previously had to suspend it due to lack of resources but now we have been able to employ one of our mentors part-time via funding from a Government works programme. This means that he, along with Yorram’s assistance will be running the club and taking on some other duties within the sports outreach team.

Other News
Volunteers:
It has been very quiet on the volunteer front this month. Although that has meant more work for our core team it has also been a good time to regroup. By this time next month we will have welcomed three new volunteers. Two from the USA and one from Holland, so things don’t stay quiet for long and we will be happy for the extra hands - especially with our leaders being away.

Cycle To The Sea:
In a few short days a team of able, willing but crazy people are going to be excitedly donning their lycra and cycling over 100 miles to raise money for us. Please support them in their efforts as this is no mean feat and all the money they raise will come directly to us and the work that we are doing. You can sponsor them online here: www.justgiving.com/CycleToTheSea2012

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!

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

July News

Where has everybody gone?! After saying goodbye to three children last month, this month we have also said goodbye to lots of our lovely volunteers. It is feeling very quiet in the volunteer’s unit and Mel has also gone back to the States for a few weeks so it leaves just Tim B rattling around the volunteer unit! Ah well, we are making the most of the opportunity and our wonderful maintenance team are giving all the bedrooms a fresh lick of paint.

Making music in the unit!

 Children’s Unit
Those children who are old enough have returned to school after the winter holidays and we are back in the rhythm of the schoolday timetable. We currently have six children staying with us which means that when three of them go off to school each day there are only three left un the unit! We are making the most of this quiet period and taking time to tidy up, sort clothes and do appraisals with all of our House Moms. We are also very excited about the purchase of a new rug for the unit. We know it seems silly but it makes the place feel a little more cosy in the winter and it’s a nice area to do puzzles and read together.

Mandela Day was last week and the children were visited by the local old people’s home who came to play and brought yummy treats. The unit was also blessed with a huge supply of delicious soup and sandwiches from Applewood Preparatory School. We’ve got so much soup that we were able to fill an entire freezer and it means that we can add it to our weekly menu. Thank you so much guys!

Since we’ve discharged Boy B we have been helping to support his new foster Mum in getting established and last week Maz assisted her by taking her to SASSA to organise her grants. We have also been keeping in touch with out other families in the community – out of sight is definitely not out of mind.

We are very thankful for a whole stream of donations that have come in. Maz had just written a shopping list and was preparing to go and buy a big list of items and there is no need anymore because all the items have been provided! God is good!!! Now, as well as the new rug we also have lovely new duvets for the beds and two, much needed, new car seats.

Please continue to pray for our relationship with Social Development and that our registration is approved as soon as possible. There are so many children in need in this town but without correct registration it is likely the magistrate will not place any more children with us.

Michael, one of the mentors

Sports Outreach and Community Work
The winter months are tough for those living in the community. We’ve been doing our best to work alongside the other NGOs in town to meet more of the needs in this cold weather. You may remember us mentioning how we have been doing more repairs on shack roofs. Although these acts are helpful and appreciated by the community they are also providing us with an opportunity to see the deeper problems and help to address those where we can. These situations can often be overwhelming at times but, although painful, it is good to have our hearts broken again and be reminded about the real situations of the people we serve. Siphila Sonke, another NPO we work with, and ThembaCare identified the shacks that were most in need of roofing in the community. The most desperate case actually ended up being more about the shack’s inhabitants rather than repairing the construction. Through offering to fix the shack we found that actually the need was for the inhabitants (a daughter and mother living in squalor and dire poverty) needed to be reunified with their family in Khayelitsha and working with Siphila Sonke we were able to identify the family and deliver the mother and daughter safely to the Grandmother where they will be well looked after.

In our sports work the mentors are really stepping up to the plate and we are seeing fantastic results. They are taking on the responsibility of planning and running the sessions and the children are responding really well. It is so exciting to see the empowerment! We have been investing more and more in them and it is really paying off – although we are not suggesting that a trip to see Man United play wasn’t a good incentive too!

Other News
Volunteers:
Saying goodbye to ‘our girls’ who have been serving with us for months was hard. They have all been such a wonderful help and brought a real buzz to the place. They will be sorely missed but we know that God has exciting things in store for them and we are looking forward to hearing all about it. Thank you Ashlyn, Jess, Katia and Lauren!

In the midst of that Team Erwin (Shae, Susie Erwin and her family) arrived to give their time for a few weeks. Susie and Shae have both served before on mission teams but wanted to come back to share their passion with their family.

We have also been blessed to meet Lisa Baldry who has been spending some time with us whilst visiting friends in the area. Lisa is from England and has been putting her photography skills to good use and helping us to capture the work of all seven of the Thembalitsha projects. The images she provides will contribute to a photo library which we can use to promote our cause. Lisa has definitely got the bug and is planning to return in November!

The maintenance team improves the shed

Maintenance Team:
We don’t often speak about our fantastic maintenance team (Johan, Heinrich and Tim B) but that does not mean that their daily hard work is not valued. The effort they put in to improving our environment and keeping things tidy makes a big difference to us. Whilst Rob and Em were away they took the opportunity to get some jobs finished in the Ukuqala 1 house which was very much appreciated by the Houses when they returned. As we mentioned earlier, they have also been painting the volunteers’ accommodation from head to toe and it’s looking great.

London 10K Run
Earlier this month 6 lovely people from the UK ran the British London 10K Run to raise funds for us. Thank you so much!

Events
Cycle To The Sea:


Can you cycle 10 miles? 100 miles? Either way we’d love you to join us on Saturday 8 September as we challenge ourselves to cycle whilst raising money for Thembalitsha.

The challenge:

8 - 16 Miles: A there and back again route from Aylesbury on picturesque lanes in the Chilterns, suitable for all kinds of cyclists and all ages and including families, you just need to be able to cycle comfortably for around an hour at an easy pace. Entry fee is £5 for adults, £2 for children.

100 Miles: A wonderful route through the Chilterns and the Thames Valley before lunch at a riverside inn, then on to the South Downs and the sea at Brighton. You’ll be rewarded with a stopover at a farm and a hearty breakfast before being driven home the next day. Suitable for regular or more experienced cyclists, you need to be able to cycle at a moderate pace for most of the day. Entry fee is £25, which includes overnight accommodation, breakfast and return transport.

Whichever personal challenge you choose, our challenge to you is to raise as much money as you can for Thembalitsha in sponsorship. Are you up for it?!

Contact us: office@thembalitshauk.org.uk to sign up!

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!