staff party

the village of hope team, less me, looking fine and dandy!

last friday we held our 2011 staff party at the wonderful erinvale golf estate in somerset west, each of the 7 thembalitsha projects were present, in total around 130 people including our 10 wonderful house moms, johan our maintenance coordinator, mel kidd, me and maz.

the day started with a delicious hot and cold brunch, followed by update reports given by each of the projects, it was great to hear from each of the projects, it gave us a real feel of family and highlighted the amazing work that thembalitsha are doing to help the most needy people and children in the western cape.

we really wanted the staff to feel special and for them to see a lighter side of the management, therefore after the reports we were entertained by some of the project managers who performed a little ditty, me and maz tried our best to ruin ABBA's 'i have a dream'...maz looked wonderful in her 70's gear complete with blonde wig and tight hot pants....you don't wanna know what i was wearing and thankfully there will never be any pictures published of that on this blog anyways!

after the entertainment we had a short awards ceremony, some awards were very serious such as a long service award and johan received ours for 'all the hard work he puts in to save us money with his ingenious ways of mend and fix', our house mom franjoleen received an award as 'most competitive mom at the children's parties'....yes some where a little less serious!

it was great that all of our staff could come together and celebrate all the wonderful things that each of the projects have achieved over the last year, it is a privilege to be part of this foundation and to work with some of the most inspiring people on this earth.

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