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
