August News

These past couple of months have been jam-packed with visitors and volunteers and we are feeling very loved!!

Children’s Unit
The unit continues to be a hive of activity! Recently one little girl contracted chicken pox and now she has mumps (poor thing!) but she seems very unaffected by it all considering and with the provision of some new walking sticks (sent from England) she is making wonderful progress, she is now able to stand unaided and this is quite remarkable given the fact that the doctors had told us that she would never walk!!! Obviously it is impossible to stop these viruses spreading in a unit full of kids who are always at close quarters but (thank the Lord) it seems that none of the other children have contracted it!

We are always thankful in these situations that the children are in our care when they are sick with these kinds of illnesses rather than in a more typical community environment where it is harder to manage and the likelihood of a child getting seriously ill (especially and HIV positive child) is increased.
The kids have been spoilt with lots of visitors and wonderful, loving volunteers over the past few weeks, which they have very much enjoyed and the volunteers have also been helping Maz to a huge sort and tidy so everything is looking extremely organised for now – not a puzzle piece out of place!

Sports
To celebrate national womens day our friends at Solid Rock organised their annual Soccer (football) tournament in the town of Worcester which sits around one hour north of Grabouw, although its winter here the weather was beautiful as Josh took 8 of our sports mentors in our mini bus to represent the Village of Hope, as usual the boys behaved impeccability and it's a real pleasure to offer them these simple opportunities to break away from the daily grind of life in the informal areas of Grabouw.

You may remember last year that the boys were unbeaten in 7 games but this year they performed even better winning 11 and drawing one of their 12 games. Our goalkeeper won the 'keeper of the tourament' award and one of the outfield players once again won the 'player of the tournament' award, a feat he completed last year as well....we want to congratate our sports mentors on their performance and for the wonderful work they do day in day out week in week out via our sports outreach into the community, these guys really are true hero's to us and their peers who they share life with.

We were also blessed by the visit our the teachers and pupils from the Aylesbury Grammar School who were in South Africa on a rugby tour, one of their teachers, Gary Ramsbottom (or Sir as he likes to be called!) attends one of our supporting churches in England and it was great to be able to welcome him and his students for an afternoon of fun at one of our sports outreaches. It was also a nice surprise for Josh Houltrum as he is an 'old boy' of the school so for him to be able to show some of his peers, who are only a few years younger than him, the work that he has been doing over the last year was a pleasure for him.

The school raised several thousand Rand and bought out some much needed extra kit, training bibs, balls, cones etc, which was a real blessing and we will ensure that we use the funds to benefit more children over the next weeks and months as the outreach grows from strength to strength.


Rainbow Smiles –HIV support group for adolescents
You might remember in our last newsletter how we had discovered that a girl from our HIV support group was defaulting on her meds. We found that the reason she was choosing not to take them was because of the sheer amount of pills and how hard they were to swallow. Over the last couple of months our fabulous social worker, Emma, has been able to walk with this girl and her family and assist by taking her to the ARV clinic. This has resulted in finding a different type of ARV that can be taken as one pill. This is wonderful as this pill is much easier to take but just goes to prove that this kind of support is really vital for teenagers who don’t necessarily know who else to go to with their issues and often don’t know where to go to find out about their options.

The Rainbow Smiles group is taking a break for a few weeks whilst Emma takes a well-deserved break and visits family back in the UK.

Other News:
Volunteers:
We’ve had a busy time will volunteers and really welcomed the support from Shae and Aubrei (from the USA) and Polly (from the UK) who’ve just been so fantastic with the kids. Those three girls have recently finished serving here, but we were very pleased to have Nakitta and her friend Bex arrive who are volunteering with us for a few weeks. In fact, Nakitta was one of the first volunteers to come to Village of Hope when it opened and was quite bowled over by the change that has taken place within the project since her last visit. Both Nakitta and Bex work in education in the UK so they are also very natural with the children and have been helping to update their developmental charts.

Sandwiched between these sets of girls was a huge mission team from #10Days – an initiative of Every Nation churches in the USA – they came to help on the project and made a huge difference by helping to clear a lot of dead wood from our woodland and turn it into woodchips for the garden areas. Sadly it was very soggy work as the rain came to visit along with them!!! We also received an impromptu visit from a American couple who Tim and Maz bumped in to on the beach one weekend!

Finally, we have to say a special thank you and goodbye to Josh Houltram who has just finished his second stint volunteering with us. Josh coordinated the sports outreach programme whilst he was here, developed a great rapport with the sports mentors and will be sorely missed.

Mandela Day:
Here in South Africa a special day is set aside to encourage volunteering. The idea is to spend 67 minutes of time on that day volunteering (representing 67 years of Nelson Mandela’s service towards the people of South Africa). You may have read on our blog but we received visits and donations from the wonderful folks at Imperial Logistics and Shoprite, The Aleit Group, Pyjamas and Jam, and Appletiser too. The children from Applewood Preparatory reliably made soup and sandwiches which they make year in and year out and we were able to bless our sports mentors with some wonderful home-cooked food in their bellies as a result. We are so SO grateful to have been recognised by so many different groups of people!!

Other Visits:
We’ve also been treated to a visit from AVCC Old Age Home who came to spend some time with the children as well as our board of directors from South Africa and Pastor Joe from the USA board!! It’s always great to know that the people who are working on are behalf are keen to see what’s going on at the coalface!

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!

an amazing sports saturday

last saturday we held another of our amazing sports saturday's where we hosted over 160 children who joined us at the elgin country club on what was a very sunny and happy day, we therefore firstly need to thank God for the provision of the good weather, the finances and abilities that each of our team has which enables us to run an event as big as this.

the children who came are part of our sports outreach clubs which run every term time weekday afternoon, weather permitting, in seven different areas around grabouw and it was a real pleasure to see the joy and excitement on their little faces as we met them at each bus pick up points with an expectation of a morning playing sports.

the day is a celebration of the children's commitment to our weekly clubs and is a place where they can show us the skills that they have learnt on the sports pitch as we organise an under 11 and over 11 soccer (association football for all those living in europe!) and netball competitions throughout the morning. however during this time together we are able to see the life skills, and even the health awareness, which we teach at each club, come to the fore, where both teamwork, sharing, communicating, courage and even patience with others is evident as we split the boys and girls into mixed clubs enabling them to work with others as they seek to win the prize!

the event isn't without its complications, just to get 160 children to the event involves early morning bus journey's as we pick every child up from around the various formal and informal settlements of grabouw, but it doesn't start there as there are so many jobs that need to be completed to ensure that this runs as smoothly as possible, from delivering and installing the 12 soccer and netball goals and setting up the pitches on the friday afternoon, to sorting 160 shirts and shorts to ensure that every player feels like a premiership star, to cooking the hotdogs and delivering them on time, it has taken a while but the preparation that is undertaken by the 'sports outreach team' ensures that the day runs like a well oiled machine and enormous thanks is sent to them from me (tim!).


during the morning we played over 20 ten minute soccer games and held a netball tournament which was attended by over 40 girls, the biggest yet!, each child was part of a team which was managed by either one of our sports mentors (peer educators) or a willing volunteer, no names but you know who you are, these managers make the children feel really important, with fair play and encouraging teamwork being the main elements to a successful manager at these events.

we could continue to write about the amazing time we had but we know that sometimes pictures speak louder than words therefore we have placed as many photos as possible which we do hope capture the spirit of the event and shows the joy that a morning of sport can bring to some of the poorest children in our communities.

August News

August has been a month of contrast weather-wise. Although we've had days of 29 degree sunshine, we've also experienced 0 degree days that have brought wind, rain and storms and caused a lot of discomfort and damp to our friends living in the community of Grabouw. The rivers are overflowing and although we have to be thankful for the rain for the farmers here we sometimes feel frustrated that we can't help to relieve the problems that it causes for the majority other than delivering a small drop of soup once a week - which often just doesn't seem enough....It's then that we have to remind ourselves of the starfish story!

Children’s Unit
We have to remember that we are able to make a difference to a few and this children who we care for in the unit here have somewhere safe and comfortable to be. Last week we were about to celebrate our smallest child's first birthday and have taken great delight in seeing him physically progress in the short time he has been with us.

Another one of the boys has recently turned 3 so is now able to start at the local preschool. His first day was a success, although came with the usual dramas of being left in a new environment! -Thankfully one of the older girls who we are looking after attends the same school so at least there was one familiar face!

Sports

We are very excited to welcome Shana Cox to our team. She has come to serve as an intern for 6 months and has just recently completed studies at Loughborough University (one of the top sporting institutes in UK). She is a fantastic addition to our team and, although she only arrived last week, has already been working with Josh helping to refine some of our policy documentation around the Sports Outreach Programme. Unfortunately she arrived in a week of very wet weather and, although she was itching to get out to do sports, has been unable to until this week.

Earlier in the month you may have read that we took the mentors along to a tournament held in Worcester (a town about an hour north of Grabouw). This was a wonderful experience for the whole team and Shepherd received the accolade of Player of the Tournament! - A very proud day for us all. Read a full match report here.

Other News:
Landscaping:
We are continuing to landscape the land in and around the project buildings and it is great to be able to start to tame some of the wilder bits. We've had to do a lot of water diverting at short notice because of the heavy rains to stop the water submerging pathways. We now have some new rivers (or perhaps canals!) as well as small lakes!

Within the landscaping we have been defining the entrance to Village of Hope and, thanks to a generous donation from local funder we are in the process of installing proper (lump-free) driveways and parking areas, which is beginning to look very proper! We have also installed a nice new fence around the Childrens' Unit play area - we are just waiting for a dry day to finish of the painting of it.

Supporting Other Community Projects:
We are trying our best to use our skills and experience to assist community projects that need help getting to the next level – so that they can apply to register their centres and potentially receive government funding etc. We’ve been assisting with doing surveys and research to uncover the need in the community and filter that into existing projects like crèches. We have also been able to help match funders with needy community projects, like Masiphumelele crèche who are now the proud owners of a new converted container extension with bathrooms and office space! It is such an honour to be able to assist in this kind of community development and make the most of all the time consuming lessons we have learnt in our work here so far.

Volunteers:
We have already mentioned Shana's arrival but we also had a quick visit from past volunteers Debbie and Jeff Trigg and Tony and Hazel Allen (who this time also brought one of their daughters, Rosie, along for the ride). They were here for 2 weeks and got really stuck in especially helping with all the painting that needed to be done -which can be a niggly job but a HUGE help.


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!

September News

It’s less than a week to go until our fearless leaders (Tim and Maz) return from their 6 week break. We are thanking the Lord for getting us through so far without too many hiccups! Although we have had some rather frustrating technical issues with our water system (which has to go through lots of hoops, gadgets and gizmos to make it clean before it magically comes out of our tap) we are still standing!

Our trusty volunteers doing their thing!

Children’s Unit
The children have been enjoying some more pleasant weather and it makes everyone’s lives a little easier when they have opportunity to let off steam outside! They are looking forward to a short, one-week school holiday too. Let’s hope the weather is good to us then too!

Last week we had a new admission of a cute little two-year-old girl. She is settling in really well to our strange little family here and certainly is happy to hold her ground around the older children! You may have read our blog post about her but we have recently found out her mother died due to TB. It is very sad but we are hoping there is a possibility for her to be placed with her grandparents soon.

We are still rather worried about a recent decision that has been made by the courts for one of our children. It is not appropriate to divulge the detail but please pray that God protects the little girl in question throughout the process and that His will be done.

Our football pitch - perfectly flat as ever!

Sports Outreach and Community Work
Sports in the informal settlement of Iraq now has a couple of challenges. We arrived last week to find that our ‘pitch’ (and we use the term loosely in the first place) had been attacked by a digger and had huge chunks taken out of it. The boys managed to play around it but it has severely reduced the space they have to play and makes it a bit of an obstacle course! Of course, we are more worried about it than the boys! We are also battling a little bit with all the younger children who come to watch the club. There are more of them that there are children to teach. A lot of them are younger siblings of the kids who are in our club. As much as we don’t want to tell them to go away – especially when we know they don’t really have anything to do or anywhere to go to – it is really distracting and makes it hard for the mentors to teach the sessions. When we have the manpower we can offer a babysitting service but this isn’t always possible and quite often there is a lot of in-fighting amongst the little ones. We need to pray about a good solution! They are so cute and need love and attention too but we can’t always do everything!


Other News
Volunteers:
This month we have been able to welcome two lovely all-american gels to the team. Kathryn and Martha are both from Texas and heard about our work through our church links there. They have been fantastic at getting stuck in and are great self-starters which is always helpful when we are short-handed. Both the girls will be with us for a couple of months and it’s really nice to have some refreshment to the team again.


Cycle To The Sea:
Our terrific team of 10 who cycled themselves silly for us managed to raise in excess of £2500. When we asked them for a report on their efforts this is what we received:

Too tired for prose but in brief my report is:
-          Great success
-          Splendid route
-          Stunning weather
-          Perfect lunch stop
-          Good crack
-          Varied fitness!
-          Very welcome overnight
-          Impressively generous donations
-          Most are keen to repeat next year


Thanks so much guys. We appreciate every penny. And to hear that they want to do it AGAIN makes our hearts swell!

You can still add to their total 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


Wholehearted New Album Released 1st October

Our friends at Wholehearted are launching their new album, Fearless Love, which will be available on iTunes very soon. If their previous offering is anything to go by then you are not going to want to miss out on this. It also includes Hope Is Here which was written with Thembalitsha in mind! Check it out! http://wholehearted.co.za/

HOPE 2012

Top SA bands are going to be making some noise for us this World AIDS Day (1st December).

If you are going to be any where near Cape Town then diarise it and get your tickets before they sell out!

They are available on computicket now. A steal at R150 a ticket. Please support us and get the word out to your friends/family/school. The more people who know about this event the better!


Get your tickets at www.hope.org.za/2012

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.

it all comes together with sport

now how did this go together again?!

on saturday morning we held our latest sports saturday at the elgin country club, the event was made possible by our wonderful volunteers, the HAN students and the german architect students who took some time off of their busy building schedule.

we host these sports saturdays for the 7 different groups of children that we work with throughout our daily sports outreach projects in the different communities and farms in grabouw and elgin valley. it was with deep regret that we had to restrict each of the teams to 8 players, meaning that some of the children were unable to attend but due to limited resources, in transportation and kit, we were still able to provide over 150 children with a fantastic morning of sport.

the 'set up team' arrived at the country club under grey sky's with drizzle in the air at 8am and by 9am the two 65 seater coaches provided by our local transport company, gaffley's, were making the trip around the townships to pick up the teams arriving with 129 joyful and expectant children at about 10am!....(it's amazing that we had just one seat left on the buses, only God could provide just what we needed)......the children from our farm outreach were already there waiting with the managers who greeted us from the buses.

finalists of the over 13's football

after introducing the children to their managers we were then set the task of distributing the kits for each of the teams, all the children were so well behaved, they listened to their managers really well and by 10.30 we had opened in prayer and the games began.

as the morning went on the weather improved and we were more worried about sun stroke than waterproofs........the girls played a netball tournament with 5 teams, some had more than the 8 players so they shared the games with substitutions and whilst they were waiting for their games they could also play a game of volleyball......the boys were split into under and over 13 age groups, a total of 10 teams, once again some with more than the 8 players we had wanted, played until a winner was found.

the children played so well, it was great to see some of the skills that we have been working on, both in the netball and soccer games and also in the way that they treated and respected each other.....the lifeskills programme is such a success and an article written by one of the HAN students appeared in the local grabouwer newspaper captures that...maybe click on the image to have a read about his experience?

report about village of hope sports
outreach in the local grabouwer

for record 'site view' beat 'remhoogte' in the final of the under 13's football, a mixed group of girls from 'remhoogte and rooidakke' won the netball and once again the boys from 'waterwerks' informal settlement beat iraq on penalties in the over 13 football tournament.

the day was a huge success and culminated in the guys from the round table providing the children, and helpers, with hot dog rolls and cool drinks.....it was a truly multicultural and international event with our referees from canada and south africa (our local sports mentors), managers from south africa, germany, holland and england...and we even welcomed some norwegians who were showing their support on their visit to grabouw.

the children made their way home at around 2pm and after a long clear up operation the dutch and german students (with a little help from the canadians) had a game of football together, our sports mentors also made up the teams with holland putting last years defeat behind them to over come the german international team 4-1 with 3 goals from michael from our waterwerks sports mentor programme!

it just shows that if we put our differences a side we can all come together and have a fantastic day which benefits everyone on different levels...thanks guys for your help and support and to the children you truly are amazing and demonstrate what a real rainbow nation could look like!

sports clinics

behind the goal during shooting practice in iraq
informal settlement in grabouw 

i think monday and tuesday afternoons are my favorite times of my week, although we run sports clinics for the children in grabouw each and every afternoon in 6 different areas monday and tuesday's are the only two days that i can commit to.

yesterday we had a wonderful time in hillside with around 50 children, both boys and girls, coming to play soccer (sorry football) and netball, and today we had about the same number in the iraq informal settlement. the kids we work with are so precious, many of them come from very difficult family situations, often living with many people in a single room tin shack or breeze block home, but the smiles on their faces when they see our team turn up is what makes the days so special.

this afternoon we were able to share the bible scripture about using the whole armour of God to protect ourselves against the evil that is part of our daily lives and i was able to pray for one little guy who had really bad tooth ache, we stood together and asked God to heal this guy, i pray that our prayers were heard and that his faith in Christ will restore what has been making his life a little tougher.

we see sport as a great medium to engage with the children, this enables us to get along side them, show them respect and teach them in a holistic way ideas that will help their educational, emotional, physical and spiritual growth.....

soccer in lwandle

arron and djuri giving a half time team talk

on saturday morning we took 15 of our local boys, mainly made up of arron's winning rooidakke team from the last soccer saturday that we held at the country club, plus a couple of boys from the iraq team, down to play their first 11 a side match against a team from the lwandle township just outside somerset west.

the whole event was a real adventure of the boys, the first time playing an 11 a side game, against a very well organised team, run by my friend mbetha, who used to play for cape town ajax in the south african premier league. the game was played in the middle of the township (mainly made up of black african people and what with our boys being mainly coloured and all the coaches being white europeans this was quite a mix!)

it was somewhat shocking to realise that many of our boys, 5 of the 15, didn't have sports shoes, some had trainers, others second hand football boots but some either came with their school shoes or bare feet...at our sports saturdays we always play bare feet so that no one feels out of place but to see our guys turn up without the basics of a kit was a shock.

free kick to lwandle, do you like the grass!

we never struggle for soccer shirts, but we played in a mix of blue and white hooped tops, shinny green shorts and yellow and or blue and white socks, we did look quite a sight!...however as my dad always told me 'it's not the player with the best boots or kit who is the best player' and we proved that by creating some good goal scoring opportunities in the first half and should have been 2-0 up before they scored the only goal of the game.

the boys played out of their socks, literally, and came away with a credible 0-1 loss to a team who had played together many many times before...they all really enjoyed themselves and were a real pleasure to take on this first adventure.

if you are living in and around cape town and do have access to old soccer boots, sized around 2-7 (that's old english sizes i think) then please let us know and we can really really bless our boys who don't have anything to play in...thanks

when all hope is lost, there's still hope in Jesus!

it's five years ago today since i first stepped foot on south african soil, a lot has changed since then and having moved over full time two years ago i have meet some amazing people, these could be white vineyard owners, coloured community leaders or simple black children who capture your heart with their stories and smiles.

no one has captured my heart more than a 15 year old boy who has been regularly coming to our sports outreach in the iraq squatter camp in grabouw, this young lad has provided me with endless hours of laughter, his ability to translate my bible stories or soccer training to the younger children has enabled me to build into many many children's lives.....however his life story is one that would keep me awake at night as the wind and rain pour down on my tiled roof, whilst he only about 1/2 a mile away from my home contends with the same conditions in his small tin shack.

only last week when we were chatting about how the local people have accepted me (us VoH) into their community did he really share the truth about his life, the hardships he faces each day as he lives away from his mother due to her new boyfriend not wanting to help her children from another marriage.....

....not only does he care for himself, cooking, cleaning, collecting water, but he also walks to school each day to gain the education to change his life. when i asked him how he coped he replied that 'well i pray to Jesus every night like you tell me Tim, and he helps me when i feel sad, or lonely or scared'.....

there's not much hope for the likes of this guy, but his only hope is placed at the feet of Jesus.

another successful sports saturday

last saturday we held our last sports saturday of the 2010 year, an eventful year for sport in south africa and not one that we have let pass by either.

this final sports saturday took place at our new venue the groenberg (green mountain) high school in grabouw, where we hosted around 100 children for a morning of soccer and netball competition.

the teams were made up of the two new schools project we have started, KMP (katharine murray primary) and pineview primary, who previously made up our hillside and rooidakke teams, along with our established community teams from iraq and waterwerks as well the farm team from remhoogte. the boys were split into under 13 and under 15 age groups with lisa organising the girls as she felt fit!....

all the boys had to play in bare feet as not everyone had sports shoes but we were able to provide football shirts to all teams, including bristol city, reading and coventry city, shame there were no QPR tops but they remain top of the football league championship in england so we're not really moaning.

we played on 4 pitches with referees from the HAN university helping out to keep control and after some stiff competition, the u13's was won by a team from waterwerks, the u15's by the boys from iraq and the netball by remhoogte, the school teams performed well and really enjoyed playing in their first real tournament.

after the games we were treated to a wonderful braai (BBQ) which was provided and cooked by the guys from the roundtable, who also sponsored our new 'village of hope sports outreach' tee shirts.

if you would like to sponsor a sports saturday which costs around £100 to run with drinks, food and prizes then please contact us!

soccer saturday goes large!

last saturday we, (tim, daz, harry and trondor), ran a 'soccer saturday' for around 60 adult farm workers from one of the local apple farms. we had hoped that we could have introduced some of the lifeskills that we use when we work with the boys in our town, however due to a late (african time) start and a huge language barrier, as some of the guys were from zimbabwe, we decided to get straight into the main event.....football!

we split the men into 8 teams and ran two leagues, each team playing each other and then a final round of games between the two leagues, it was all great fun, we refereed the games and i am sure the guys had a great time.

it's our aim to start to work with the farm workers children on a friday afternoon, and to find a 'responsible' worker to take over the model that we set last weekend, this will be a long process but one to which we are called.

the main reason for running the event was to keep the farm workers from spending the whole afternoon drinking, which i think we achieved, although we all needed a stiff drink ourselves when we got home!!

the myths that surround HIV

living in grabouw we are part of a wider community heavily affected with the HIV virus, one in three people in our town live with this disease and many more are affected by it's prevalence. that said we don't see thousands of dying people walking our streets, living with HIV isn't a death sentence and what with the work we are doing via the village of hope, thembacare and the other NGO's in town we are seeing people not only stabilised but living a 'normal' life.

yes there are the drugs which must be taken every twelve hours to keep the virus from spreading and becoming full blown AIDS, but once a person is on the ARV programme life continues, with it's daily struggles and chores.....i was reading an article on the BBC web site about ladies living with HIV in zimbabwe who play football, the perception of 'the world' is that of people lying in hospital beds or dying in their tin shacks, however as the article states these ladies want their status to be known, for their lives to be as normal as possible, playing sport, working, raising a family is all part of life, with or without being HIV+.

we know and work with so many infected people, do we treat them any different to anyone else? no and neither should the world look down on or despise such people, we need to love them, embrace them and give them a hope and a future.

soccer in iraq (or irak as some say...!)

this afternoon myself and arron started our soccer outreach to one of the poorest areas in grabouw, this settlement or squatter camp is called iraq, and with no electricity and only a handful of stand pipes which provide water to this community it's not hard to understand why this is the place is in such need.

at 2.45pm we picked up a couple of local xhosa speaking guys from thembacare who had kindly said that they would interpret for us, our local schools worker, sandra, also joined us as we made our first venture to work with the young people of this area.

by 3pm we had made contact with a guy, called anderson, who i had met a couple of years before when visiting his wife who had been discharged from thembacare...funny how the first person i met was someone we knew!...he was interested in what we were doing in his community as he runs the 'adults' soccer in iraq and what with him, the other two xhosa speakers and a granny venturing into the settlement with a megaphone we really pulled in the kids for this first session!

as is the norm we spoke about the programme we are rolling out, with a focus on soccer as a lead into providing lifeskills to the local boys, our commitment to them, the importance of listening to the coach (that's me), and having fun.

the session started with a light warm up, today as a little cloudy in grabouw so that was needed even more than normal, then we split into 4 teams of 4 players for a simple game of soccer to see what the talent was like....and man could some of these boys play.....they all listened well, took on the importance of working as a team and we all had fun.

we are looking to develop this into two weekly sessions, tuesdays and thursdays and we are already looking forward to this coming thursday where we have asked the guys to spread the word throughout their community and we will once again share the love of Jesus with these children who society has destined to a life of poverty...