The Power of Community

Soupa! - Boys about to get soup from Shannon and Rob

It’s truly been the Cape of Storms the past few days. We’ve had buckets of rain here, so much so we have lots of unofficial ‘water features’ springing up around the Village of Hope and I keep thinking that some people would pay a lot of cash to have one of those in their garden!

In this awful weather it’s, once again, those with the least that suffer the most. Unfortunately we don’t have the materials or money to fix every leaky roof but we thought that we would ask the local farm stall to see whether they would be happy to supply some extra soup in this extreme weather. Peregrine and Orchard Farmstalls, the two cafes in our town, already supply us with soup every Friday and here they are happy to go further because we have established a good relationship with them and they have recognised that they are in a position to help. Thanks to them we could bless many, wet, cold and hungry people who at least, if nothing else, can have something wholesome in their stomach today.

As the years go by we have been worked hard to establish good relationships with many local businesses who now happily go out of their way to help us because they acknowledge that we are making some kind of difference.

This year, we are blessed with another fantastic opportunity from local wine estate, Paul Cluver. They have an amazing amphitheatre in the woods which they are rebranding and basically handing over to us. The potential of this venue – now called Hope@PaulCluver - is infinite and I will be working with them to maximise every bit of it – although we will be doing this slowly to make sure we do it well ;-) Last year it was Hope Festival, now it’s Hope Theatre! You can read more detail about how it works on our website here.

We are so thankful for all the people in Elgin and Grabouw who are helping us to serve this community by supporting us with their skill and resources. I could list lots of people on here but I am worried I might miss someone out and that would be bad!!

I am confident that by sharing our skills, time and resources, we can shape our community for the better making a more dramatic difference to the vulnerable and marginalised in our town. If we get it right we could be a blue print for other similar communities in South Africa!

 ...Perhaps this time next year, when the weather gets bad again, even if we can’t do it, there will be someone able and willing and on hand to fix those leaky shack roofs!

Emily

the soup run continues!

collecting the soup from the orchard farmstall

blessing the local creche with the lovely warm soup

people are often willing to get involved in helping those in need but are either unable to spare the time or know who to link up with to enable them to do that...and this was the case when a few years ago i chatted to the owner of a local restaurant as we tried to encourage them to get involved with the local community in a tangible way. they didn't want to give money and couldn't spare the time for a visit to see what we were doing at the village of hope, both via the children's unit or our sports outreach however the way they could do this is by committing to making us up a batch of soup which we would transport into the creche in rooidakke as well as iraq informal settlement each and every friday. this worked well for the last few years however our initial suppliers restaurant is due to close for the winter next week so we were left with a bit of a dilemma.

whilst this isn't really part of our main calling towards those infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB it does allow us to be a conduit between those that have and those in need, after a few conversations we have been blessed with the provision of soup from the orchard farmstall who have taken up the batten to supply us with this much needed soup for the foreseeable future, and although all we have to do is deliver the soup from their kitchen to the creches in the community it is a wonderful way to see these people gain an extra nutritional meal which will help with their TB medication.