please vote for our trailer!

as you may remember the village of hope, and our sister project thembacare, were part of a filming project by wayne schoenfeld and nadia duguay (see previous post here)....well the trailer for the forthcoming movie is part of a competition and we would invite you vote for the trailer by visiting the international movie trailer festival site here. you need to find the trailer, called 'every day is a gift' click to watch the trailer then you can vote for it!.....

the book has arrived

well after a few weeks of waiting the wonderful book entitled 'footprints in the sand' by wayne shoenfeld arrived in our post box this morning, we spent a good hour pondering over the thought provoking photos and reading the text about the work that we (village of hope and thembacare) are doing here in grabouw and then this afternoon i was able to take a couple of copies of the book out into the community to bless those who appeared in the book with us.

see photos of our security guard and care worker


the guy that provided 'security' for the team has now moved into one of the newly built government homes, his neice once spent some time with us at the village of hope and he is still fully employed as a security guard, however the thembacare worker who features throughout the book isn't doing so well. i was very embarrassed to have bought them a present, which wasn't going to sustain them through this tough period, her husband has not worked for a couple of months and they are waiting on his salary R830 for 4 weeks work which will only come through in 3 weeks time. this care worker had to be laid off from thembacare due to short funding and when i asked what they were eating she said that she had spent her last money on a cabbage and had borrowed R30 for some paraffin to cook over, she had a lot of washing in tubs on the floor of her shack but couldn't wash it as she didn't have any soap powder.....

...i came away feeling really really sorry for her, to be the star of a book and to be living like this is not the way it should be.......we really want to reemploy this amazing lady who lives with the HIV virus but with limited funds we have had to cut back.....it is shocking in a community with such a need we cannot employ enough staff cause of funding....

if you would like to find out more about the book then please visit waynes web page by following this link or have a look at the work that exeko are doing by visiting this page.

film preview and forthcoming book

you may remember last year that we welcomed nadia from exeko and the photographer wayne schoenfeld to the village of hope to capture the work that we and thembacare do in grabouw, see this link to that post. well we are pleased to announce that a book entitled 'footprints in the sand' and a film called 'everyday heros' are being launched. to capture a preview of the film then please follow this link to waynes website and click on the video clip at the bottom righthand side of the page.

we are so excited about this project, the film preview looks amazing and we hope that when it's launched at the international childrens hospice conference in washington DC in october that this will highlight the work that we are doing here in south africa.

weekend filming and a new boy!

this weekend we have welcomed a team from canada who are filming at our thembacare and village of hope projects in grabouw, the team are from the exeko project and are following the lives of our careworkers and the children we look after on our project.

today, as the team were filming, we were contacted by the thembacare team in grabouw about a boy who needed a home whilst his mom received treatment for HIV at the clinic, he is about 3 years old and is also HIV+, it was amazing to show the film crew around the settlements and for them to see the day to day work that we are doing in our community.