July News

Tim and Maz in front of their (soon to be completed)
new home

After months of upheaval, building, moving and change it really does feel like we things are coming together.

The land itself is looking more tidy. We have nice neat spaces for wood piles and the generator. Maz and Tim have moved into their new accommodation by the children’s unit and the long-term volunteer’s house (which used to be where Tim and Maz stayed) is truly homely and full with long-term volunteers!

Children’s Unit
The children’s unit is benefitting from the arrival of Emma Podmore. She has, along with Barbara, slotted in with ease to the ebb and flow of the unit. Emma is a qualified social worker and is already making distinct headway, solidifying our relationship with the social services further and working with them to see our discharge plans implemented more smoothly (and possibly quickly).  This month she has been able to assist the mum of one of the boys here in the unit to acquire a protection order from her violent boyfriend. This is something that should seem quite simple but is never easy.

Two of our house moms have recently completed their Early Childhood Development Level 4 qualification which is fantastic news. It has taken them 18 months to get the training. We have two other moms who started in January so will hopefully be qualified this time next year. We really do believe in investing in our staff as much as we can and are so excited that the moms will now be able to put into practice all they have learnt on their courses for the benefit of the children we care for. With this as well as the catering training they are receiving from Barbara we are going to have some very well equipped staff working for us!

Sports
The sports programme took a break over the June/July holiday. This freed up the afternoons to build up our wood store. We have wood burners in all of our buildings and this is our main form of heating in the colder winter months. Therefore we get through a lot of wood. Thankfully we also have lots of trees on the property which we can harvest as we need them. We’ve been lucky enough to have Josh and Sebastian from the UK volunteering with us and helping Johan build up the wood supply. Of course, boys being boys, they are more than happy to have the opportunity to use chainsaws!

During the holidays all of our sports team attended training from Solid Rock. It was a great opportunity to invest in our mentors and also to get our hands on some fantastic new materials to assist our programme. They’ve just started to implement the new programme as sports restarted after the holidays this week and from now on each child will receive a different card (similar to a baseball card) which they can collect each week.

Other News:
Mandela Day -
This month we celebrated Mandela Day and were blessed with some tasty soup made by the pupils of Applewood Preparatory School. This soup has been stashed safely in our freezer and will provide a nutritious meal to our children both in the unit and at our Rainbow Smiles HIV support Group.

Volunteers -
As well as Shannon, Emma and Barbara we also have Josh volunteering with us for three months from the UK and Lisa who is visiting from America to help out with sports. In the next few days we welcome back Tony, Hazel and Rosie Allen and Debbie and Jeff  Trigg who will also help us out for a fortnight. We are going to be busy! Adding them to Tim, Maz, Rob, Em and Mel it means we have 15 people serving here all together. Crazy but blessed times!

Events -
Get #Active4Hope –
Please do not forget to support these two events we have coming up if you can:

• August 10th - Going The Distance for Hope
• September 14th  - Cycle To The Sea.

Follow the links for more details and see how you could get involved and help to make a difference in a simple way.


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!

June News

Well the building works continue! Although the children’s unit is now complete there is still a lot of remodeling to do. The house where Tim and Maz were staying is becoming the long-term volunteer accommodation and Tim and Maz are going to be moving into what was the old volunteer’s building but will now be a flat for them as well as some offices. We’ve also been able to get the walkway completed around Ukuquala 2 so that short-term volunteers can get around their house without getting stuck in a bog!

The children and House Moms have been able to remain warm and cosy in their new unit and are getting to grips with the new layout. They feel much happier and secure in this new environment – We have stronger doors and locks and also have a security guard on night watch.

We are now on the Department of Heath’s schedule for monthly visits from an Occupational Therapist. This is a fantastic new extra we are able to offer the children in our care. The therapist will be training up the House Moms on specific exercises and routines that they can put in place for the children. We already have some new movements we can do with the little girl who is struggling to walk from this first visit so we are looking forward to seeing improvements!

Sports

With the winter weather setting in our sports programme has been a bit sporadic. We’ve had A LOT of rain already and any wet weather stops play because the kids don’t have nice warm houses or hot baths to go to after a session. The club in Iraq is proving particularly challenging due to the lack of pitch (because the municipality have reclaimed it for building works).

Other News

Volunteers -
We’ve just waved goodbye to our most recent Dutch students. Marlise was our social work student and Eric our sports student. Once again we’ve been very blessed by these two and we are sad to see them go but excited for what they will do next. We’ve also been able to say hello to Barbara Wood. This is her third time with us, this time with a commitment of a year! We are so excited to have her back and know she is going to be a fabulous addition to the team. She is already getting stuck in, using her background in catering to coach the House Moms. By next month we will also have another returning volunteer, Emma Podmore, who is a trained social worker and will be able to pick up where Marlise has left off.

Shannon, our volunteer from the USA has also asked to stay longer so is extending her stay to at least December. She is now our in-house worship leader extrordinaire and we’ve also got her coordinating our weekly HIV support group for adolescents, Rainbow Smiles. She is doing a great job and really investing in the kids.

Get #Active4Hope –
You may have seen in our blog posts earlier this month about the new #Active4Hope campaign. If you didn’t you can read more about it here. You can choose how far you get involved in it but if you would like to sign up to some sporting events organised by us then we’ve got two suggestions for you: Go The Distance For Hope and Cycle To The Sea. Check out our Facebook page for all the details.

Hope@PaulCluver-
This is another initiative which is able to happen thanks to the generous folk at Paul Cluver Wines which is a local wine estate. Please see here for more info: (www.paulcluver.com) We are so excited about this opportunity and any profits made will come directly to us and our sister project here in Grabouw, ThembaCare Grabouw. Emily is in charge of organising the venue from now on so she is going to be a busy bee!

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 acce

a helping hand (near and far)

well, we have been extremely busy over the past weeks so apologies for the intermittent posts! we are still trying to get the building works finished which seem to be taking forever!

wood for our mentors before the rains came

and then the rains came

from our previous post you will have read that winter is starting to set in and with it comes stormy weather and rain. even a dusting of snow on the mountains! although the snow looks pretty, these harsher weather conditions make life in the township even more challenging than usual.

helping with a sports mentors new roof

as always we do our best to go the extra mile at this time of year, whether it’s organising extra soup to be provided to some local creches or donating scrap wood from our recent building projects that can be used by our faithful sports mentors as fire fuel. with such overwhelming need in this community it’s very easy to get distracted from our ‘day job’ (?) and consider setting up a soup kitchen or start another equally worthy project…but we have to remain focused on what we are already doing and build on that, trusting that God will fill in where we cannot. we cannot always do more… 

however, if you feel like you DO have room in your busy schedule to do more then we’ve made it really easy for you to help to restore hope through Thembalitsha wherever you are! 

the clever bods (yes, we have a few believe it or not!) in our marketing team have come up with a wonderful plan... it’s called #Active4Hope and it is very easy to do!

1.      get active:

run, cycle, walk, row, jump, skip, craft, sew, dance, make music…..whatever you love to do you can create awareness for our cause and be #Active4Hope.

2.      wear:

they’ve got a very smart t-shirt to go with this (thanks to mel who designed this for us) which you can download and print onto your preferred white t-shirt. the idea that you wear this shirt whenever you are active and become a walking (or running, crafting, rowing etc) billboard for us! (download it here)

3.      join or enter:

lisa modeling the new active4hope tee shirt

to take this concept further you can even decide to enter an event and fundraise for us too or create a social or training club where each member of the group wears the shirt for meetings/training sessions.

4.      tweet:

we just ask one favour, that you tweet us (@thembalitsha using hashtag #Active4Hope) and send us a pic of how you are being #Active4Hope to keep us informed of what you are up to!

if you need to be led by example then look no further than the wonderful lisa baldy who’s doing a number of sporting events for us over the course of the year. she is the first to own an #Active4Hope t-shirt and has raised nearly £500 for us already. also krissy clark has began a cycle group to train for events in south Africa called ‘a freakin’ cycle’. they are sure to be famous throughout the western cape of south africa before too long!

we hope that this will be the beginning of an online movement and we can build a whole community of people who are joined together in being #Active4Hope.

by doing this one simple thing, you can make a difference wherever you are in the world and whatever you do! be inspired!