tim and maz celebrate in holland

tim with some of the sports students

tim and maz have been away in europe for a couple of weeks now and during their stay they had the opportunity to travel to holland to join the celebrations at were taking place at the HAN university that the village of hope have relationship with.

maz with some of the social work students

the celebrations were around the 10 year partnership that the HAN university have with our local theewaterskloof (TWK) municipality, the local grabouw town manager as well as other people from south africa had made the trip to holland to meet up and share with some of the students that had completed their internship in grabouw.

it was a joy for tim and maz to catch up with so many of the students who had spent their internship at the village of hope over the last five years and it was interesting to here about their career moves since graduating from university.

the automotive facility at the HAN

it was funny to see all the students together in one place and as they were all from different year groups they really didn't know each other that well so we gathered the sports management students, social work or nutritional students together and introduced them to each other!.

during the day they were shown round the vast university campus, made up of over 28,000 students, and the tutors explained some of the subjects that the HAN offer, including automotive development, water management and design technology.

towards the end of the day we gathered in one of the huge lecture theaters where students gave their thoughts around the time that they had spent in grabouw, which was very insightful and the day ended with a braai for over 200 of us who shared our stories and caught up on the things the students were doing.

if you would like to read more about the day and the partnership created between the university and the municipality then please follow this link.

another successful sports saturday...

last saturday morning, into the early afternoon, we held our most recent sports saturday, this time with help from our german students who are busy building the extension to our children's unit acting as managers for the boys soccer and girls netball teams.

trying to get everyone's attention

once again the event was held at the magnificent elgin country club, with the wonderful scenery providing a stunning backdrop to the games being played by over 180 children who were split into 25 teams, playing soccer and netball under the guidance of our dutch student, eric, who did a sterling job in managing the other volunteers and local sports mentors.

heniz the manager of one of the 25 teams!

there isn't much that hasn't been said before about these amazing events (click on these links to see other posts around our sports saturdays, nov 2012, oct 2011, mar 2011) however it must be said that it is one of the longest but most exciting days, the joy on the children's faces as they board the 65 seater coaches for the short journey to the club, the fun that is had by playing sport against other children from the 6 different clubs we run and the 'thank you's' that we receive whilst giving out prizes or for the meal which ends the day are sights and sounds to behold.

the amazing volunteers for the day
(minus a couple of local girls and ladies who
had already left!)

after the children have been safely returned home it has become the custom for sports mentors and the volunteers to play a large soccer match, unfortunately this time there weren't enough german's make up a team, so we played europe verse africa, with a few ringers from the USA and grabouw making up the european team. for once it was nice to be on the winning side especially to come from 0-2 down to beat our wonderful sports mentors (peer educators) who really should have won!

i am hoping to put up a few more photos but i have included a couple that were taken of myself trying to sort the kids as they arrived on the buses and then a team picture, less some local help, of the helpers who made this day possible.

the village continues to bring ho ho hope!

santa and his sleigh before we left the village of hope

it has been another amazing year here at the village of hope, we continue to see God's provision to us as we seek to serve the community of grabouw especially focusing on those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB, all of which are rife in our town.

we could spend a whole blog post about the wonderful things that have happened this year, all the stories of the children that we have helped to find a stable family to go home to live with or those that we are still seeking to help via our children's unit, we could talk about the provision of a new building provided by the students from stuttgart university or the people carrier bought with funds from our friends in england and the dutch charity 'wings of support'. we could provide a long update on the sports outreach which has grown from strength to strength, now engaging with more local mentors who have been supported by the students from the HAN university in holland but all that would take such a long time, so we urge you to venture through the previous posts on the blog to find out what we have been up to during 2012.

children excited to see santa coming to their street

however what we would like to share is the fact that our incredible team of permanent staff (our house moms and maintenance team) and our willing band of volunteers, both longer termers, short term mission teams and individuals, have continued to offer hope in what can sometimes be seen as hopeless situations and this culminated in our annual sleigh ride into the areas where we work day in day out.

it was great to see the children and members of their families that we work with enjoying the sight of father christmas being towed through the town, up the main street and then into each of the communities, many of whom live in little wooden shacks with no water or electricity. the whole community seemed to be out on the street and although we did bless them with a few sweets and apples that wasn't the reason we run this event.

kids chasing santa and his sleigh 

the main reason to do this again was to bless them with the chance to see santa coming to their streets and for that to provide another sign of hope as we celebrate the most amazing story of hope, that of a little baby coming to earth to show us how to live, to love one another, our neighbours and even our enemies, as we love ourselves, to look after the widows and the orphans and proclaim the good news that he can provide hope in the most hopeless places. thank God for Jesus and we thank him for inspiring us to do what we do each and everyday here in this little town in south africa.

happy christmas and may you see hope in 2013 as we enter another year of opportunity to serve those less fortunate than ourselves......

our biggest sports saturday yet!

fun at the huge netball tournament

on saturday we hosted our biggest sports day ever at the elgin country club. our weekly sports outreach clubs have been growing in number over the last 6 months and the investment we have made with our sports mentors being a huge influence on that. as has become custom we like to bring all the children that we work with at the different clubs together for a whole morning of fun and games, based around our soccer (football) and netball teams.

it's a goal!

i hope that i'm not taking anything away from any of the other sports saturday's that we have run by saying that this was not only the biggest, with a total of 198 children attending, around 140 was our previous highest, but also the best organised. as with all things you hope to improve and some of the lessons we have learnt in the past were overcome and even with a smaller team of volunteers compared to the past we were able to host a bigger event which is a real testimony to those who helped.

awaiting the prize giving

a big thank you must be given to the dutch students who are on placements with various projects around grabouw via the HAN university, especially yoram who is our sports intern and who took the main lead in organising the event. our volunteers at the village of hope also helped and were assisted by our wonderful sports mentors (our local 16-20 year old's who assist us at our weekly clubs) in managing teams,  refereeing the games or keeping an overview on the whole day.

the winners!

winning girls receive their funky sportswear

we took a different approach to the way that we ran the soccer tournament  having all ages playing together instead of an under 13 and under 15 tournament, and with boys being split up from their normal weekly clubs to play in mixed teams. this worked really well, uniting teams, old boys caring for the younger ones, and working together as they played. we had a total of 16 soccer teams split into 4 leagues with the winners of each group playing in the semi final and then final.

headbands for all!

the girls played in their normal weekly groups but with over 60 girls playing it needed to be organised and refereed really well and we want to thank lori and cozi for sorting that with the help of jaqui.

in the past we had used just one bus to transport the children from the various areas around grabouw, with the two sets of farm children arriving via their own transport, but such was the numbers seen on saturday that we had to set up a second bus to ensure that the children had seats. as you can imagine there was such joy as we firstly pick up and then journeyed to the wonderful country club, many of the children visiting for the first time.

thankfully we were blessed with no major injuries but with our system of indemnity and contact forms we are always ready for the worst......the only down side of that system is that some of the children had forgotten or had incomplete forms which meant disappointment for them as we were unable to ensure their safety whilst in our care!

a great day was had by all, with the winning sides being blessed with some amazing sportswear which was donated by our latest american mission team..we hope the photos will show some of that joy!  

the kids enjoyed a russian and chips (pork sausage) before they left and the day culminated in a big braai at the country club for all our helpers, and even the house moms were able to join us with the children in our care from the village of hope. the weather played its part and we thank God for that too.....

.....bring on the next one in 2013....can it become any bigger or better run?

a visit by a flying dutchman..

henk, marlies and our new bus!

we are so grateful to all our sponsors and donors who enable us to undertake the work that we feel called to at the village of hope, many of you give funds help with the day to day running costs, which cover our house moms salaries, children's food bills, electric and vehicle maintenance etc etc but sometimes people give to a specific project or requirement.

it is also really really great when those who donate can come and make a visit to see where their hard earned cash is being spent and last week we had such a visit from henk from the charity 'wings of support' who had blessed us with part of the funds that we used to purchase our new minibus (see previous blog around that here).

wings of support as a charity set up and run by employees of the dutch airline KLM and it was good for henk to meet up with one of dutch students, marlies, who is studying with us for 10 months working around her social work degree.

thanks wings of support and thanks henk for making the time to come and visit us all the way up the mountain in grabouw.

visits from local dignitaries

thembacare grabouw make the front page

sorry that we have been so quiet since we returned home, but for those of you that follow us via this blog or have visited the village of hope project here in grabouw you will know that our days and therefore weeks seem to run away with us. added to that but just before we returned from england my (tim) laptop's hard drive gave up the ghost so i have been without my own internet connection which has hindered my prolific blogging!....however that is a poor excuse so whilst maz is enjoying an evening at the school of hope awards i thought i would share a bit of news, prior to the october newsletter which will be out soon, this majors around our appearance on the front and middle pages of last weeks local newspaper, the elgin grabouwer.



major visit with the HAN and UWC delegation at the
village of hope (in the rain!)

i say we appeared as in the royal we, meaning both thembacare and the village of hope, but news is news and we are so closely linked to our sister project that the we is really we....anyway the front page news was the fact that following their mandela day visit to our two projects in grabouw staff from the cape town parliament felt led to purchase a much needed hoist to help our staff manage the lifting and movement of the patients in our inpatient palliative care unit.

the major and maz

the other news, which took up the middle pages, and included a nice little article about the work that our former volunteers, daz and lisa, are doing with a little creche, was all around the visit of our major, chris punt, to the town. the visit was initiated by the HAN university team to showcase the work that their students are involved in.

the village of hope are currently proving placements for 2 sports students and a social work student, as well as a past HAN social work student who is volunteering with us at the moment and therefore a visit by the HAN delegation and therefore the major was always on the cards.

the delegation also included tutors and facilitators from the university of the western cape who we not only showed around our children's unit but also informed about our work in the community via our sports outreach and thembacare home based care team...the major also enjoyed lunch with us and had a long chat with myself and maz around the needs of our town and the ways in which the thembalitsha foundation are helping local and national government, and their departments, to provide much needed help in the health and education sector.

although some photos were taken for the paper it is very hard to see maz so therefore i have added a photo with her and the major together.!

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

new sport support from the HAN students

new sports students with the kids from
site view and snake park sports club

over the last few years we have been blessed with a plethora of sports students who have been placed with us at the village of hope sports outreach project, it has been my honor to be the 'practical supervisor' for these students from the HAN university in nijmegen, holland, and we have not only been able to continue but also expand and extend our sports outreach, via better planning schedules and documentation, thus ensuring that the project continues long after the dutch students have returned home. this has been due to the work that we have developed for our sports mentors (peer educators) and this is something that the new students will continue to work towards.

this afternoon we held our first sports outreach with the new students, yoram and anna, who will be working with us for the next five months. the field was packed with children, some of them much too young to be able to understand the topic for the day, which was all based around planning for the future and how being prepared is an important lifeskill to learn, however the 24 boys and 20 girls aged 9-15 who attended the club had a wonderful afternoon.

the photo was taken right at the end of the session when at least half of the children, and our wonderful care worker, lindi, from thembacare who comes to help run the netball with the xhosa speaking girls, had gone home. however i hope you can see the joy on the faces of the children that we work with on a monday afternoon from the site view and snake park areas of the townships here in grabouw. the photo also shows themba, standing to the top left of the photo, who is our peer educator for that club....unfortunately michael (our other mentor) was late home from school and could make it today!

tomorrow we will be working in iraq with our further clubs taking place in rooidakke, waterworks, and the two farms on wednesday and thursday afternoons. please keep an eye out for the future news of the sports outreach we do in grabouw.

impressed with our dutch students, again!

angelique and marijn

since we started work at the village of hope we have always had a heart to enable people to take the step from their first world existence into the lives of the poor and needy third world which surrounds us here in south africa.

there hasn't been a day in the last three and a half years where our volunteer unit has been empty, in fact we have welcomed over 300 people on to the project, some have come on a visit and felt the call to return for the longer term, like rob and emily house, or mel kidd and tim berger, some have stayed for a night during a mission trip whilst others have volunteered for 3 to 6 months and we thank them all...you know who you are!

with the direct action that we have via our village of hope community work, sports outreach and rainbow smiles HIV support group, and our sister project thembacare grabouw with their seven bed inpatient unit and outpatient care work we are able to offer people a chance to work with some of the most sick and needy people in the world.

over the years our relationships have developed with international churches sending return mission teams back to us again and again, the infocus team who spent time with us last week are an example of such groups. we are  also bless to be able to provide practical opportunities for students to come and serve with us, this can be seen via our relationship with the university of stuttgart who have committed to a long term partnership with the village of hope and they have already blessed us with building two eco house under their ukuqala projects.

one of their power point slides

yesterday i was attended the latest presentations from the most recent group of students from the HAN university in holland, maz attended a presentation last week as well. last november me and maz were able to make a visit to their campus in nijmegen and their partnership with our local municipality encourages students to come and make a difference to non government and government projects in and around grabouw.

over this last few months we have worked with nutritional, physio and sports management students who serve with us at the village of hope.

the impact and input that the HAN students have at the village of hope is invaluable, over the years they have enabled us to set up policies and procedures to enable us to run an effective children's unit and in the wider community to develop our sports outreach programme with written documents to help stimulate and engage new ideas on health and life style awareness to the 200 or so children that we work with each and every term time afternoon.

the latest sports students (angelique and marijn) have been working on their thesis which will help us evaluate the effectiveness's of the sports outreach programme, capturing data to see what impact, if any, our weekly clubs have on the behaviour, social awareness and self esteem of the children we work with to ensure we are not wasting time providing something that is having no tangible impact.

at the moment i am busy reading through their thesis, evaluating their findings which compared 100 children who attend our clubs against 100 who don't, i will then have to see how we will implement their suggestions for us to be more effective both in the use of local resource, our time and planning for the future!

this team of students have excelled themselves in helping us to serve our community, even the guys who are part of other disciplines have helped out with some of our sports clubs and we are really going to miss them when they return home next week.

we want to thank the HAN university for their willingness to partner with the thembalitsha foundation through the village of hope and we want to especially thank the students who are a real God sent as we seek to impact the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

supporting mentors...ajax come so close

view from signal hill

its hard to put into words the sights, sounds, feeling and or just the experience that we had yesterday evening as we took our 8 mentors who help with our sports outreach to watch cape ajax v orlando pirates at the green point stadium in cape town. we were also joined by some of the dutch students and a few of our volunteers who came along for the ride (more about that later).

our first stop was at signal hill, the back side of lions head mountain which shares the cape town backdrop with the world famous table mountain, from our lofty view the boys had a great vista across their city and were amazed by the sight of the stadium far below. as we drank in the view the mist from table mountain rolled in front of us, causing the stadium and roben island to appear and disappear from the scene....one of the boys commented that it looked like a dream, and in a way he was right, it was a long way from the realities of his daily life filled full of worries about the basic things of life that we all take for granted.

the wow of the stadium

from those lofty heights we ventured down into cape town and made our way to the victoria and alfred waterfront where the boys were wowed by the street performers and overwhelmed by the amount of people enjoying the sights and sounds of africa (not the real africa but a good introduction to the the continents many tourists!).

after a long meal at the mcdonalds overlooking the harbour, where the boys enjoyed and even lingered over their big mac and fries, we made our way with a few thousand other vuvuzela blowing fans to the stadium and other than a few minutes getting through the not so tight security we found ourselves walking up the steps to the awe inspiring stadium which was fully lit against the cape town skyline.

to see the faces of the boys as they saw the view of the pitch for the first time was one of the most amazing things i have had the pleasure to have share, their eyes opened wide at the spectacle that presented its self before them, not only were they dumb struck by the vastness of the stadium but also with the presence of their famous footballing stars right before their eyes.

our intrepid volunteers

many of the boys come from homes with no running water, let alone electric to power a tv, for some of them these legends were only seen via the newspapers or soccer magazines telling of tales of heroism and glory. tonight they were going to share in the highs and lows of their team, and even if 'their team' wasn't playing they would cheer and clap at every move of these modern day gladiators. (i've be waiting to write a report like this for years but after the 2010 debacle that england played on this very pitch against a poor algeria side, and the fact that that night the stadium wasn't a riotous colour of african fans but just the same old random blokes from london, huddersfield or manchester who were in south africa to watch their hero's fail once more, (this time in africa (rather than south america or europe as has happened so many time before), it didn't seem that fitting until now!

only god can help his team!

the game was fast and furious with cape ajax taking a dissevered lead around 20 minutes, however that lead only spurred on the pirates and their large allegiance of supporters which out numbered the home support by at least 2 to 1, and they leveled 3 minutes later with what was to be the last goal of the game.

we were surrounded by home, away and even neutral supporters who all aligned their support of their clubs, pirates, ajax, cheifs and stars fans chanting their songs, calling upon their god's support of their teams...the riot of colour, the cacophony of sound filled the stadium and although the game ended as a 1-1 draw each fan, each child and spectator took away their own thoughts and dreams such as i have seldom seen before.

boys enjoying after game celebrations at the waterfront

after a short walk back to the waterfront, posing in front of the 'ferries wheel' we found our faithful combi to join the queues of vehicles making their way back to their homes, for us it was grabouw  but along the N2 we said our goodbyes to those from the townships of langa, athlone, kayhelitsha, maccassa and lwandle.....

...dropping the boys off in the informal settlements of grabouw proved to be a quiet affair with the majority of friday night party people in their homes when we arrived at 11.30...and as we dropped off our last of our sleepy mentors we received a phone call from 'the girls', our volunteers had broken down half way up (or down dependant on your stance) sir lowry's pass in our newly acquired audi A4....argh....another two hours waited us as we firstly returned to the village of hope to secure our toyota hilux to provide the much needed pulling power, but found that the car was fixed fast and only a tow truck would suffice to bring the car to its return to grabouw.

the audi on the tow truck...eeek how much will
that cost?

an amazing and long day came to an end at 1.30am with thoughts of new sights and sounds, new friendships made and the thought of an expensive repair bill filling my mind!....

...for me today is another day, the stresses and strains of running a project which engages with people infected or affected by HIV, AIDS or TB, but for the boys a new day has dawned where they have seen the stuff of dreams.....such is the life we lead here in grabouw, its a real conundrum but thanks for taking the journey with us.

dutch visitors with gifts from ajax...

harry (left) with michael and the rest of the older
 iraq football team

this afternoon we were blessed by the visit of our good friends harry, winny and son joel, their daughter elise worked with us on her placement in grabouw from the HAN university a couple of years ago and we stopped with them when we visited the HAN in nijemgen in november.

harry has some good contacts with ajax amsterdam (the real ajax) and during our training session with one of our sports outreaches in iraq informal settlement this afternoon we were able to present the most regular of our boys, along with one of longer term our sports mentors, michael from waterwerks, with a waterproof training jacket...which was very welcome as we had some very unseasonably wet weather which meant that the children could go home warm and dry!

the younger children received ajax scarves and tee shirts, the children at the village of hope were also blessed with some goodies...thanks guys your support certainly does make a difference.

January News

Happy New Year from all of us here at Village of Hope. As we enter 2012 we are full of excitement at what God has in store for us this year…We are also rather hot! The summer has decided to kick in and it has been in the mid-30s for the past week…phew! Anyway, we intend to grab 2012 by the horns, seizing every opportunity and continue our fight to restore hope to the communities we work with.

We want to invite you to join us in our quest and use this year to make a positive change . Why not sign up to volunteer or take on a personal challenge to raise funds for us? Two of our Thembalitsha staff might inspire you. Together with their friends they have organised two initiatives in aid of our Foundation. Frances from our sister project Bosom Buddies is completing 6 physically grueling trail runs within a month – for those of you who don’t know, these runs are actually like racing up and down a mountain! (Sponsor her here) And Amanda, our funding manager, is going to cycle from our Village of Hope project around the coast to the most southern point in Africa: Cape Agulhas.

Together we can make a huge difference. For more information on how you can get involved email us: info@thembalitsha.org.za…..Start now!

Village News
Tim and Maz returned back safely from their exciting tour or Europe – That might be a slight exaggeration but they did cover a few countries on their trip! The tour proved to be busy but very successful. It seemed a fantastic mixture of talks and presentations, worship events, radio interviews, plane flights and visits to past volunteers. They also managed to spend some quality time with their family too!

The rest of the team here were very relieved to receive them home! There were no major incidents whilst they were away, the project didn’t burn down and remained pretty much as Tim and Maz had left it! – Always an achievement!

The children opening their gifts from Operation Shoebox
(Isaac ably assisting!)

Children’s Unit
The Children in the unit had a most enjoyable Christmas time. This year, for the first time, all the children were able to spend at least Christmas day with either a House Mom or a relative. This was a really special time for the children. They all came home very happy and with huge grins on their faces. It must have been great for them to be so spoilt and have the sole attention of a normal family for a change. Our 11-year-old boy was the only one who was unable to go to a family. Unfortunately for him he had to remain at our sister project, ThembaCare Athlone, because he had just been discharged from hospital after yet more health battles. He is still there now. We have tried to bring him back to the children’s unit in between times but it just hasn’t worked – he isn’t stable enough and needs more medical support. Please continue to keep him in your prayers.

Christmas also saw a flurry of parties and celebrations for the children in the unit. This year our party, in conjunction with the day hospital and ThembaCare, was very generously funded and meant that we could have a magician: Mr Fu Lin Yu (get it?!) The kids loved it.

The new year brought in a new child who has come to stay whilst his home environment gets sorted. He is yet another little one suffering with HIV and TB but is a happy little soul and has made himself at home here very quickly.

Those kids who are old enough to attend school are back. Our 6 year old boy has started ‘big’ school and now has to wear uniform – he looks very cute and is very proud of his new attire but is a little overwhelmed by his new environment. Also, our 3 year old girl started preschool for the first time. She is loving it and is especially insistent on carrying her own rucksack despite the fact that it’s almost as big as she is!

Our Dutch and Australian volunteers with
some of the kids from our sports clubs

Sports Outreach and Community Work
We were able to take the children from our sports clubs out for their annual trips to the beach again which is always good fun. It’s such a special experience for these children who, although they only live 20 mins drive from the sea, hardly ever get to visit the beach and for some it was their first time. We were also able to take them to a local restaurant to have burgers for lunch. The expressions on their faces really were priceless when they saw their lunches arriving. It really makes you realise how blessed we are to consider eating out as a normal activity.

These beach days were the final flourish of action from our fantastic interns from HAN University in Holland. Stephan and Weike really have helped to develop and refine our sports outreach, taking it to the next level, and we were very sad to see them go last week. They were so dedicated to us in their time here and really embraced the project as a whole. They go leaving a legacy and a high standard to retain – so no pressure for the next two students who arrive in February then?!


Other News

Volunteers:
Where would we be without volunteers? This year we have so many bookings (right through to July already!) and we are so thankful because if it wasn’t for these fantastic specimens  we would really struggle to keep our heads above water. This month we were sad to say goodbye to Heather, whose solid, level-headedness  and hard work was so valuable over her three months of service – especially with Tim and Maz being away. We also said goodbye to Stjjn who was with us for a month including Christmas and new year. He was a building student from Holland and helped to construct a new water tower on site so that we can install a new filtration system to purify the borehole water. We will miss trying to pronounce his name and his big hair!
Thankfully we’ve also been able to welcome some new volunteers. Jess Trigg from Yorkshire is with us for six months and is already getting stuck in with the Children’s Unit. She is revising all the activities and bringing in some fresh ideas. She is already looking a lot less pasty that when she first arrived thanks to the heat wave we’ve been having recently!
We are also very excited to welcome Tim Berger back. Tim has served here numerous times by bringing over and leading mission teams from America. This time he has arrived to serve us for 2 years and we can already see that he is going to be a great asset to the team – even though he’s another American so with him and Mel here us Brits are rapidly losing ground!

New Year, New Building:
Yes, you did read correctly! –Guess what? We have another group of students from Stuttgart, Germany, arriving to build another building on Village of Hope. The advance party of three has already arrived and another twenty-five will be joining them mid-February. The university are keen to build a long-tern relationship with us and will be putting a plan in place to return annually to add more structures. Once again they have raised the funds to do this themselves which is staggering. Our thoughts at the moment are that, hopefully, we will be able to build enough accommodation so that we can move the volunteers out of their current place and free up that space to develop the work of the children’s unit to include counseling rooms and a staff room for the House Moms as well as meeting rooms….but this will all take quite a while. We will be posting regular updates on the blog as to the progress of this next building. It looks like now we really are going to have a village of the land!


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!!! You can download a standing order form from our website – don’t forget to sign a gift aid form if you are a UK tax payer

• Fundraise – Commit to shave your head, host a quiz night, do a sporting event!!!!! – The possibilities are endless and can raise £1000s with enough enthusiasm! We also have annual walks, runs and bike rides. For more information contact us office@thembalitshauk.org.uk

• Pray – Sign up to the prayer newsletter. Prayer is just as vital to us (if not more so) than money! We can’t have enough people committing to pray persistently for us. Sign up at prayer@thembalitshauk.org.uk


VOLUNTEERING

We rely heavily on committed volunteers to do the stuff out 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 the Village of Hope please download the INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS documents from the Support Us page on our website (www.thembalitsha.org.za). Also, please do NOT book ANY flights before your application form has been accepted. Thank you

info@thembalitsha.org.za

walkers update III (wholehearted tour news)

well another week has flown by with our week long trip to germany and holland now over we are focusing all our attention towards to wholehearted tour which kicks off tomorrow evening in taunton, with further events in bath on wednesday, aylesbury on thursday on what is world AIDS day, and then a weekend in london starting in hammersmith on friday and finishing with 4 events with the everynation chruches on sunday....for further info the please visit the wholehearted facebook page or the wholehearted blog which they will be keeping updated with stories of their trip......but that is all to come, what follows is a short recap of what we got up to last week.

the ukuqulaII students

on monday morning we got up for the early flight to stuttgart where we had a short meeting with leslie, the project manager from the ukuqula I project, and then we had a three hour presentation by the students who will be working on the ukuqala II project. it was wonderful to meet these 25 students who have not only spent time looking at the 2012 project but also the long term development of the village of hope in the future.

in the evening we met up for a meal with the students who built the first ukuqula home in feb/march of this year, words cannot express how much their time and commintment to build us an amazing ecco house is appreciated and they will always be held up high in the stories of the village of hope.

some of our ex-HAN students
at the pancake house!

tuesday was another early start to make the hour long flight from stuttgart to dusseldrof where we were met by an ex HAN student, elsie and her father, we enjoyed an evening of football and food with them at their home just outside bemmel.

on wednesday we met up with the international department of the HAN (highschool arnhem and nijmegen) and their tutors to discuss the work that their sports, pyhsio and social work can do as they partner with our thembalitsha projects in grabouw, we also had a chance to speak to some of the students who will be joining us in early 2012, providing them with some cultural background to south africa and the types of things that they will be experiencing during their five months with us.

we were totally blessed by the amount of ex students that came to meet us at the 'pancake house' in nijmegen on wednesday evening where we took time to catch up with them and their progress since they left south africa, it was so good to see them all.

children at the emmaus school in arnhem

thursday morning was also an early start, no rest for the wicked they say!, where we had an oppertunity to share with 3 different classes of children at a school in arnhem, this went really well, they had some very good questions which followed a powerpoint where we showed them some photos of the work we do in grabouw.

gerrit spronk picked us up in arnhem and we enjoyed an afternoon in amersford before sharing with his home group in the evening. gerrit also drove us over 300kms on friday, taking us to meetings with an ex village of hope volunteer, leo, and then on to den hag to meet up with the dutch chefs who visited the village of hope with the culibus in 2010 and who are looking to set up a fundraising event in early 2012.

saturday was spent with eveline and bart in amsterdam, a wonderful if not somewhat 'hippy' city, before flying back to england during the evening to stay for two nights with josh's (our middle son) girlfriends  (haddy) parents paul and lindy who made us feel very welcome after such a long trip.

heres to a wholehearted coming week!

our new dutch students get involved....

wieke with two of the children

this week we have been joined by our latest students from the HAN university in holland, stephan and wieke (with a 'w') will be working with us on our sports outreach into the community. they are both studying sports and sports management and are the 4th set of students that we have been blessed with.

they have helped at a couple of our sports clubs already however today the students spent the morning with our thembacare careworkers in the formal and informal settlements as they (the careworkers) visit the patients living with HIV and TB, it's always challenging to see the real side of grabouw but i hope it opened up their eyes to the problems that we face in our town.

stephan proving a real hit with the kids

this afternoon they joined us at one of the sports outreaches at a farm in the elgin valley, where they engaged with the children and helped deliver our lifeskills and lifestyle programme. i hope they will be ready for next week when they will really get their hands dirty as they help us serve the kids in our community with a well constructed and life enhancing programme which uses sport to relate with the kids in a positive way.

saying goodbye again...

elelien and maz sharing stories in the baby unit
 with our house moms and other volunteers

we are totally blessed to have so many wonderful volunteers and students who come to serve us at the village of hope project, however as with most good things time catches up with us and departure dates arrive all too soon.

last night we had a good bye braai for one of our dutch students, evelien, who has been with us for the last 10 months as she studies 'social work' at the HAN university. evelien has become a firm favorite not only with the children in our unit but with those we have placed back into the community, she has also made some real ties with our house moms and key members of our team.

she also shares my keen interest in formula one and has been an ever present companion at the local bar where i watch most of the races. we will all miss evelien so much but wish her all the best for her future studies and hope that one day she will return to visit us again.

saying goodbye on youth day

yesterday was 'youth day' here in south africa, a day off for the school children and a day where the nation remembers the events of june 16th 1976...see last years post here, this year we were part of an outreach at a local farm where around 200 children joined us for some fun, sports games and food, however the weather put an early end to our day.

it was a bit of a mixed day for us as we said our sad goodbye's to our latest wonderful dutch sports students from the HAN university. we have been so blessed by the help we have received from djuri, jasper and talitha who have not only enabled us to continue the wonderful work of our sports outreach into the community each and every afternoon but they have developed our lifestyle (healthy living) programme which now sits within the daily programmes that we run with the children aged between 9 - 15 in 5 different areas of grabouw.

these guys will be sadly missed but we trust that they will succeed in all that they plan to do in the future and look forward to welcoming them back someday to see the effect of their work in the lives of the children that they worked with....thanks guys you are superstars

health awareness at our sports outreach

talitha teaching oral hygiene

as part of the link that we have with the HAN university in arnhem in holland we are blessed with new students every 6 months or so, who come to complete part of their studies with us at the village of hope, over a period of either 5 or 10 months. providing help to maz in the children's unit via social and physio students and to us with our sports outreach in the community via their sports management students.

we run our sports outreach in 5 of the poorest areas of grabouw each afternoon, this sports based ,bible and lifeskills programme uses football and netball to interact with the children, giving us a base to provide them with some basic life skills, such as working together which brings self respect and respect for others as well as allowing us to link that with a suitable story from the bible which shows the children that God is interested in their lives and can help them when they are faced with different issues during their home, school and social lives.

during the last few years the dutch students have been setting up a life style programme which teaches children basic health awareness topics, such as teeth cleaning, hand washing etc and over the last few weeks we have incorporated this programme into our sports outreach, which now provides the children with a wider knowledge for their lives.

this is working very well, although our hour long sessions are a little bit crammed so we are needing to spend slightly longer with the children, which is no bad thing!

march 2011 sports saturday...

on saturday we hosted our first 'sports saturday' of 2011 which we feel was our most successful event so far, we have learnt a lot of lessons over the past couple of years, including the work we did during the world cup and we ensured we had larger pitches which encouraged the children to use their football skills and a computer to work out the schedule of play, the weather was also absolutely gorgeous, maybe slightly too hot but no wind which was a blessing.

the event was organised by the village of hope sports outreach team, with the help of our three wonderful sports students from the HAN university in holland (djuri, talitha and jasper), who certainly benefited from the support their fellow students gave them.

the day started with the collection of the children around the informal and formal settlements of grabouw, the 65 seater bus to left waterwerks informal settlement at 8.30am and then ventured round to the rest of the areas (hillside, rooidakke and iraq) to collect the children to who arrived in fine spirits at the elgin country club at 9.15am. all of this went to plan and we were met by the children of remhoogte farm (commonly known at remwater by the dutch students!).

as we made our way from the bus we were greeted by the willing team of volunteers from both the HAN university and also the students from the ukuqala team, (stuttgart university), who had been busy setting up the football and netball pitches ready for the games to start at 10.00am.

as we sorted the 90 children into their teams, under 12's and under 16's boys football and 3 netball teams, they were also introduced to their 'managers' for the day (made up of the university students and our sports mentors from our weekly clubs) and given their kits, and after a short talk and prayer the action started.

the standard of football was amazing, the children have developed so much since we start

ed working with them and every team was very evenly matched, their team spirit and team work was something to behold and the overall behaviour of these children is something that our team can be very proud of. some of the poorest and most needy children in our town w

ould put some of the riches and most privileged children (and adults) to shame.....we are so proud of them.

for the record we had 5 teams enter the under 12's tournament, which was won by waterwerks on goal difference from iraq, unfortunately remhoogte didn't win a game but had a bonus of playing against the lovely young ladies from HAN university as their prize!...

..the under 16's tournament was once again a hard fought contest, the 6 teams played some of the best football that we have seen since starting with these children over 3 years ago. a special mention must go to hillside who beat one of the waterwerks teams and held their own in their other games against much stronger and larger opposition. not for the first time arron's rooidakke team won the prize.

and the prize was for the under 12's and under 16's to play a 10 minute game against the german and dutch students, which was a real sight to behold, both children's sides managed to sneak a win which made them very happy.

the netball was also a hard fought competition, to see the girls from very different areas, different races and tongues come together to play sport was wonderful to see, this competition was won by the slightly worrying team called 'the bad girls', who narrowly beat 'frans stars' (that's one for fran black an ex volunteer who started to work with the team last year) to the title.

by 1pm we had presented the prizes to the teams, the best player awards received a new football top, under 12's choose a barcelona kit and the two boys who won the under 16's choose a liverpool shirt and a chelsea top (as a queens park rangers support it slightly guiles me to write that name on the blog, but we are called to love our neighbours and even our enemies as ourselves so i didn't really have a choice!)...each child had a warm cup of soup (not really appropriate for the weather but for them perhaps the only nutritional meal they wound receive that day) which was kindly donated by the rose an

d bull restaurant (who provide us soup each and every friday for one of the nutrition centers in rooidakke).

once the children had been dropped home, the german students were challenged to a football match by the well prepared dutch students, who must have been eyeing this fixture for some weeks as they turned out in their 'orange' baffana baffana tops!.......i (tim) was picked to play for holland, it must have been my silky cruyff skills that sold that one, i was joined by shane (our american volunteer) and arron turned out for the german team (say no more)!.....

.....you wanna know the result....well lets say that history once again repeated itself with the english ref (rob house) awarding a hotly disputed penalty to the german team in the last minute of extra time.....you can guess what happened next......no chris waddle or garreth southgate to miss that one..........sorry holland

new dutch students

today we welcomed the new dutch sports students from the HAN university (arnhem in holland) onto the village of hope project. jasper and djuri helped arron at his rooidakke club and talitha helped me, mel, and emily's sister, sophie, at hillside. the girls loved their new friends and we had over 25 boys and around 12 girls attend the club.

we are looking forward to working with these guys who will not only help at the midweek clubs but also look to extend the work via the municipality into other areas of grabouw. they will also take on the work that bart (our last sports management student) did with the astro turf sports pitch that will eventually be part of the new rooidakke formal settlement project.

photo shows talitha after the hillside club.