mission team brings us back infocus

don and his bathroom painting team!

over the last week the village of hope team have welcomed some very familiar faces back onto the project, it is so good to see friends from infocus church in augusta returning year after year to come spend time with us.

six of the team (of ten) have been part of previous mission teams and their willingness to get stuck right in has impressed us once again. it's hard for us to put into words the value that they add during their visit but they have not only been involved in some of the more physical aspects of the daily chores that a six hectare property needs to ensure that things don't get out of hand, such as weedeating and tree felling, but they have added  much value to our spiritual well-being too.

the list of jobs they have undertaken is quite substantial so if you would like to find out more about those and their other experiences during their trip then it's probably best to visit their blog via this link to get their prospective on their time spent with us.

volunteers galore

seb and chris chipping away

over the last couple of weeks the day to day team at the village of hope have been blessed by a plethora of volunteers who have come to spend time with us from all over the world.

trinity team with matt and seb
(not sure what maz was laughing at!)

firstly we were joined by matt, seb and chris who hail from sydney austraila, these three guys, also known as captain hook, peter pan and tinkerbell, were an absolute God send as they cut, chopped, mowed, chipped and thoroughly overhauled our grounds, giving it a real spring tidy up after the cape winter. they also joined us at our sports outreach where they worked with our sports mentors during our afternoon sports sessions.

then we hosted an amazing team, ablily led by larry, from trinity church in dallas, this was the second time that larry, his wife and son, along with sarah and her son christian had visited us, however this time they were joined by a village of hope newbie called celeste who fitted into their team very well. not only did they help out with sports, some gardening work and playing with the children in the unit they also spent time at the other themablitsha projects and even led the weekly thembacare service here in grabouw.

cozi, lori, with maz, greg, teresa
and agatha

next greg arrived from paris, greg will be interning with us for the next seven months where he will be leading our sports outreach. greg is a pure track and field athlete and we will have to hone his football and netball skills to ensure he fits in with the children that we work with each afternoon.

and finally we had a flying visit from some of our ex-volunteers, cozi and lori, along with cozi's mum and sister, these crazy girls were in cape town for a wedding but couldn't resist coming to spend 4 nights with us, they also bought some much needed netball kit for the girls in our sports clubs. we are really looking forward to using these at our forthcoming sports day at the country club.

as we said, it is a true blessing to be able to host people from all around the work, they really are able to capture the essence of the project and the heart we have for our community, thank you to everyone who takes time to come visit us and use up their valuable time, money and holidays to be with us.

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!

a couple are 'bould' over by the work of the village of hope..

kyle, sammar, maz and myself at the christmas
in july event at gordons kitchen last week
we all agreed that this was a very cheesy
family photo!

sorry for the cheesy title of this blog post but all will become clearer the further you read into this post.

a couple of weeks ago myself and maz spent some time 'off site' and decided to go to camps bay and this is where the story of the 'boulders couple' started.

as many of you who know us will testify the work we do at the village of hope runs through our veins, this isn't so much of a job or even a calling the project is at the very heart of all we do. it's hard to box our lives into separate specific times, we don't so much as go to work we are always at work and for some this is hard to understand, we are advocates for the thembalitsha foundation and agents of change for good and our God 24 hours a day seven days a week, even when we return home to england or take a trip to madagascar for instance the work and the impact that we are having is on the very tips of our lips.

with this in mind its not hard to see the story of our meeting with 'the boulders couple' unfold but to give this blog post a twist i have provided a link to their blog in which they capture the meeting and therefore the heart and the work that myself and maz do, with the help of our amazing staff, both local and international, so please click on the link below to go read about sammar and kyles experience at the village of hope.

click HERE to visit the blog post which will bring some light to the ramble above.

sight provided for those in need!

the girl with her new glasses (side photo to protect her identity!

sometimes it is easy to take things for granted, such as our health, health care systems and just the ease to buy what we need!, we hope the story below will highlight the struggles that many of the children we work with face each and everyday. 

a couple of weeks ago during our Rainbow Smiles HIV Support group one of the girls approached emma, and asked if she could talk to her, it seemed to take all of her courage to tell her that she needed glasses and that her mother could not afford them, she went on to say that she is finding it difficult to do her school work without them. 

after undertaking a home visit we found out that this little girl doesn't actually live with her biological mother but her aunt, uncle and 3 cousins in a small home and that following the death of her parents they do not receive any extra money to help support them with her care, the glasses would cost R250 (£15). 

this initial interaction all took place on a friday afternoon, the very afternoon on which emma was going away on a well earned holiday, as you can imagine this broke emma's heart and challenged the very fact that that this young girl could not afford a pair of glasses, that are so essential and without them the affect on her health, education and future, and the holiday was a luxury and would not have detrimental affects on her future if she did not go.

these are some of the struggles we face on a daily basis living in a place that has completely different worlds right next door to each other. emma was able to express my heartache over facebook and emma had an amazing response, so many people offered to donate to buy a pair of glasses we have received donations of up to £80! there were also so many messages of encouragement from many people around the world encouraging the work we are doing and it is really amazing for us as a team to be able to hear those messages and it spurs us on a bit more to continue doing what we are doing. 

last week emma was able to take the girl down to the day hospital to buy the glasses, but that didn't go as smoothly as first anticipated and after waiting a long time they told us we needed to go to the provincial hospital as her eyes are very bad! as they started to make their way to book an ambulance they realised they had given the wrong folder!! good job they noticed and after going back and queering this they were finally told that they had lost her notes...!, this isn't the first time this has happened and thank God we were around to rectify the problem, we do appreciate all the work that the local hospital do and the fact that they have so many patients with complex cases but really! after some discussions they were able to see her again right there and then and redid the eye test, confirming once again that she needed to wear glasses. 

the young girl took great joy in trying on all the different frames and picked a pair she liked and we paid for the glasses. this morning we went to pick up the glasses, the day hospital was bursting with people at 7.30am but luckily all we needed to do was pick up the glasses, the young girl was very excited and seemed very pleased with her new glasses and it was a pleasure to watch this dear girl as she received an amazing gift she so desperately needs. 

unfortunately though this is just one case out of many, we would love to be able to help everyone and its difficult knowing that we are unable to do so but we continue to trust God and know what may seem impossible for us is certainly not impossible for God, we continue to be his hands and feet and pray he will put is in the places and with the people he wants us to be.  

thank you to everyone who donated, it was amazing to feel so supported by so many people, please continue to pray for the children in our Rainbow Smiles group and the children in the community whose lives are so complex.

thoughts from volunteers and mission teams!

the infocus mision team at the very 'country
club' that shana speaks of....

living in the day to day 24/7 world of the village of hope is an awesome experience and it's amazing to think that our small actions are having a huge impact in our community. we are obviously aware of the plight of the poor, we work with them each and everyday, however there are days when we forget that we still live in a very parallel universe, on one side are 'the haves' and on the other side are 'the have not's'.

we are blessed to be able to host volunteers at the village of hope, these come in all shapes and sizes, they can be individuals who have felt the call to serve for three months or more, or can be larger groups of short term mission teams, mainly coming from churches who are linked to the wider foundation.

it's interesting to watch the dynamics of these teams as they see for themselves the impact of our work via our various missions in our town and have an opportunity to meet the people we serve, it's also interesting to watch each individual as God moves them as they spend time with us.

we do try to give a broader view of our work on this blog but it's always good to read how other people see things during their time with us. over the last few weeks we have hosted a couple of mission teams, one from dallas and the other from the infocus church in augusta, georgia, who kept a blog about their time with us, we would encourage you to read their blog by clicking here and to see the things that impacted them during their time with us.

one of our longer volunteers, shana cox, has also been busy blogging and her latest post really picks up on the plight of our sports mentors, we are sure that you will be as moved as we were when we read this well constructed post so please sit down grab a coffee and or a tissue and follow this link to her blog and her post entitled 'opposite hillsides'.

we want to thank these teams and individual people for the impact they made and the skills that they shared with us.....it really does make a difference.

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!

volunteers arrive (from buckinghamshire!)

emma in an unfortunate one legged pose alongside
josh in his sad football top, anyone spot the team?

as you will be aware the opportunities that arise for volunteers to come and serve with us via the thembalitsha foundation are wide and varied, and our local nurses, house moms, care workers and sport mentors (of which we employ over 50 full time staff over our two projects in grabouw) are complimented by amazing people who have joined us from all around the world.

over the last few weeks this team of volunteers who serve in so many different ways here at the village of hope has grown by three, two of the those are returning to fill specific roles which we have been praying around for a long time and one is joining with the hope of extending their stay if things work out well.

emma starting as she means to go on with a
home visit in the waterwerks community

all three volunteers hail from the same part of the globe, that being a very small area based in the vale of aylesbury, in buckinghamshire, england. but they all attend different churches and have all arrived on separate journey's which is a testimony to the diversity that we have with the churches in that area (tim and maz used to live in buckinghamshire before they came to set up the village of hope!).

barbara will helping with our volunteer programme, she is a great cook and will also be supporting the house moms as they look at the menus that the children are enjoying, she also has a bent for finance so she will be involved in that area as well. emma was last with us in 2010 and since then has fully qualified as a social worker and she will be assisting maz in the complexity of our children's social cases which as a major task in itself. it's great to have these two wonderful women come back to serve with us.

on the other hand josh has committed to helping johan with maintenance around the property in the morning and will be joining the community team each afternoon as we share our lives with the children in our community via the medium of sport. josh will also be joined by seb who has been working with us for a few months now but has committed to being part of the team, abet living 'off site' and we welcome him to the ever growing family.

a different view...

sometimes its hard to capture all that goes on here at the village of hope and to have an opportunity to look at it from a different angle is always interesting.

our most recent longer term volunteer, a wonderful young lady called shannon from hunnington beach california, is serving with us for six months and she is keeping a blog (which hasn't been updated for a while, come on shannon!) which we would like you to visit to hear her experiences as she lives and works with us....therefore please click on this link to read her blog, see some of the photos she has taken and hear about her experiences here in grabouw.

a quick catch up!

ukuqala3 richtfest lead by heinz wolf 

firstly i am really sorry about the awful layout of this post, i have been playing around with the photos and text for ages and this is the best that blogger can do at the moment!

so much is happening at the moment, which i am sure you can imagine with 28 students and their tutors from stuttgart who are completing the amazing changes to the buildings here at the village of hope but we have also been joined by our new dutch sports student and we have received some very special gifts which are making a difference to both the lives of the children who live with us and those who we help in the community. what follows is a very short catch up on all that is happening, complete with photos to give some visual perspective!

phillip aka roger visits from switzerland,
with friend (chris)

we have received visits from some amazing people, not only did phillip, commonly known as roger federer, who was one of our first volunteers over 4 and a half years ago, come and visit us he also got involved in our sports outreach where we were able to use 40 of the 100 small footballs which were donated by travelstart.

rodnights visit
(complete with german underpants!)

visits from pop stars!

maz received a visit from 3 children that she used to work with when she was a classroom support in england and some friends who we met last year, via my parents, came to visit from sweden, two members from the amazing 'wholehearted' band came to visit to chat around how they can get further involved in our projects here in grabouw they were swamped by our house moms who revere these people as true hero's (think the boot might be on the other foot if truth be told!!!)....yes it has been a busy time.

the new rocking horse
...thanks matt and katt!

matt and katt donated a wonderful outside rocking horse in memory of assi and the children have been enjoying riding that for the first time this week, thanks guys it is a real hit with the children and its hard to keep the house moms off of it too!

following the departure of yoram and annemiek we have been running short of support at our sports outreach, however this week we have been joined by eric, our latest student from the HAN university in holland who will be with us for the next five months, you might be able to see his tall frame in one of the photos!

the ukuqala2 house gets plastered!

kids playing with new footballs and
eric the new HAN student

and last but not least not only have the building works moved on at a pace but we held our very own ukuqala3 richtfest, read more around this german tradition here, which celebrated the completion of the roof section of the new children's bedrooms. the toilets at ukuqala2 are coming along well and the walls inside the main ukuqala2 building are receiving their sand, lime and straw rendering so we will soon be able lay the floor and fit the kitchen in readiness for our first family of volunteers!

me and maz sharing at the richtfest...
(i know the socks!)

i think that's it for the mo, sorry there are so many stories in one post but i think that gives you a flavour of the things that are going on at the moment.

first person to sit in the ukuqala2 toilet!

times they are a changing!

new bedrooms on the back of the childrens unit

taking down the bedrooms which the vineyard team
constructed over 4 years ago!

the architectural team from stuggart, along with their trusted and adopted student, dave knight from england, are making a real impression on all three projects at the village of hope.

saul and nigels bathroom is remodeled!

for those of you who have visited or stayed as a volunteer you will notice a huge difference which can be seen in the few photos which i have posted, the children have now moved into the 'old volunteer' kitchen/meeting room and the team have been busy converting the volunteer bedrooms into our new office space with new entrance/reception area, but the main changes can be seen in the children's unit where the new bedrooms are taking shape and the kitchen and bathrooms have been ripped out to create some extra space for the additional work that we are planning at the village of hope.

our new morning meeting space

the long term team at the village of hope have also had to find a new meeting place and this morning we joined together on the stoop of ukuqalaI to pray around the and plan for the challenges we might face during the day.

german students enjoying a game of netball

it is quite sad to see some of the hard work that has been undertaken by some of our volunteers over the last few years being taken apart but we know that there is a bigger plan and we are excited to see how the new space will be used to enhance the work we are doing both with the children that we are called to help, as well as providing better work space for our long term team and volunteer experience.

we have tried to engage the ukuqala3 team in the work we are doing in the community and it is our desire that each member of the team is able to join us at our sports outreach in the different areas around the town, as you can see some of the team have enjoyed playing netball and even a version of 'duck duck goose' with shannon our longer term volunteer.

duck duck goose with shannon!

please visit the ukuqala web page to keep up to date with the work that is going on this year by clicking on this link and if you would like to see some of the work that the ukuqala2 team undertook last year then please visit their youtube pages here.

January News

The Christmas period was a wonderful time in the children’s unit. With the school children on holiday, we made the most of it and took trips to the beach when we could. We were donated a fantastically glitzy Christmas Tree by some of our neighbours who run a Christmas decoration company and that helped add some festive spirit to our usual surroundings.

We were very happy to be able to spend Christmas Day hosted by The Weigmans, a wonderful couple from our local church who opened their home to all 24 of us (including visiting family) for a beautifully relaxed day by their pool. We were able to coax the children into the water and encourage them to play with all the inflatables and just relax and have fun together. The children received some gorgeous shoeboxes full of presents from the generous folk at Operation Shoebox. As you can imagine, they were very excited.

As you may have heard, 2013 has started with a lot of tension here in Grabouw and there has been strike action this past week which has had us all on high alert. The protesting has included fires and looting and at one stage we had 200 people going past our front gate. The local farmers have been on patrol 24 hours a day trying to protect the farms and the sound of gunshot has not been unfamiliar either. It has been very disconcerting and we are trying just to keep carrying on with our usual activities but it has been tiring being alert all the time and it has been difficult to get staff in on occasions.

Obviously our major concern is for our staff and children that we work with who live in the community and are closest to all the action. We have been praying for their safety through all of this and the striking does seem to have calmed down since the beginning of the week.

Although this is happening, this week sees another one of our children take his first step into preschool. We can’t believe he is starting! – It only seemed yesterday we were looking after a 2-week-old bundle of baby!


Community Work

Sports Outreach:
Our community work took a break over the long summer holidays which gave us time to bless our sports mentors this month with a trip to Green Point stadium to watch South Africa play football against Norway. It truly was a great time for the 16 young people  and for some of them it was their first experience of the big city a quite a culture shock.


Other News

Sleigh:
Fast becoming a Village of Hope tradition, we took our make-shift sleigh around the town the Friday before Christmas. Complete with Johan as our South African Father Christmas, we towed the sleigh behind the bakkie and gave our sweets and apples to the children. Although this may seem a trivial to do for a community in such need, it really does bring a smile to everyone’s face and spread a little joy.

Volunteers:
We have been very happy to have lots of family visitors over the Christmas and New Year period and of course, we hoodwinked them into helping us out with our work whilst they were here!

We also said ‘au revoir’ to Tim Berger who served with us for all of 2013 and was a fantastic complement to the maintenance team. Tim isn’t actually leaving Grabouw but it moving on to do some other work and will still come and help us out when he has time.

Towards the end of the month we will be welcoming Shannon, from America, who is coming to serve with the other long-term volunteers and the Stuttgart Architect students will be returning for their third visit and be developing our buildings and land further – watch this space because this time there is going to be a big change!


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 (it doesn’t have to be cycling)!!!!! – 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

Charity Single

It doesn’t matter what country you are in. Everyone can benefit from this! The fantastically generous and talented folk of up and coming British band, Being Buffalo, have released a track especially for us! And it sounds great too! We get 50% of every sale so please let your friends and family know about this! You can find the track for download here:

http://beingbuffalo.bandcamp.com/album/hope-charity-download

2013 to be full of hope.....

christmas day chilling with a coke!

we are sorry for the lack of blog posts over the last week or so but we have experienced some inconvenience with our internet service being cut off and us having some really great family time with the kids and house moms, as well as tim's family being over which has been nice.

on Christmas day we were welcomed to the home of some friends from elgin united church where we and all the kids, house moms and volunteers descended into their space, it was a wonderful time, the house moms and kids swam in the pool and we enjoyed some lovely food together.

waiting for the new pool to fill!

the children received a new paddling pool which has entertained them for many an hour, it's great to see the joy that a simple pool of water can bring.

we also ventured to the beach on new years day, again the house moms and kids enjoyed a chilled time, splashing around in the sea and making sand castles. this is such a wonderful time of the year in cape town and we have been truly blessed with some fantastic weather.

collecting water with mommy maz

not every one's 2013 started with such festivities, 4 children from our local community have died from the effects of diarrhea, which seems incomprehensible in this day and age, however with little access to clean water or basic sanitation the situation can quickly lead to death for these little ones.

i (tim) was able to assist with the funeral transport and support towards the family of a very close friend of mine who's 7 month old sister passed away on Christmas day, the family who have nothing (and i mean nothing) have had a little piece of their joy taken from them and we mourn the passing of their daughter with them.

things have also been interesting around the village of hope as well, with a large section of fencing being stolen over a number of days, we have managed to find some of it in the local community with the police being involved in finding those who are causing havoc around the town. our neighbour has been broken into 3 times over the new year and we praying that he will remain upbeat in a dire situation.

so it is into 2013 we look with hopefulness, we pray peace and joy over all of you and whatever 2013 holds for you we continue to thank God for your support towards the work we are doing here in south africa.

December News

Celebrating a new home for our long-term little girl

The children’s unit continues to roll along with the gentle flow of admissions and discharges.

Our little characters always keep us on our toes and bring smiles to our faces as they blossom in the loving environment our House Moms provide.
Hearing them pick up the English, Afrikaans and Xhosa languages is always a marvel and put us oldies to shame!
The school children had an outing to Bird World which they thoroughly enjoyed and were involved in an end of term presentation. One little girl received a certificate for 100% attendance. So proud!

We again had two children successfully placed into loving homes. The first was a little girl who spent a couple of months with us and whose mother sadly died whilst the child was in our care. The grandmother from the Eastern Cape was willing and able to take on the responsibility of this dear little girl and over one weekend an aunt travelled the 12-hour journey to Grabouw, collected the child and made the return trip!! What a mission! - but it demonstrates the commitment this family is willing to make.  The aunt really blessed us as she shed tears of gratitude because we had taken care of her niece through a very difficult time.  We have heard since that our girl is doing really well and is loving being with her cousins.


Our second child has been placed into a wonderful family on a foster order initially but soon to be adopted. This is again a real answer to our prayers.

One of our long-standing children has gone back into family care! It’s going to mean a massive change to our Village of Hope family dynamic but it seems her sister will also be placed with the aunt and so the girls will grow up together.  Again unfortunately the mother has died very recently during this process but we just marvel at the timing of all things.

With Christmas coming we hope that all our current children will be able to experience a family Christmas with willing volunteer careers for the day and possibly some with their own families.


Community Work

Sports Outreach:
It was a record-breaking month for sports. We hosted our largest sports Saturday to date with nearly 200 children attending. It was fantastically organised by Yorram and Annemike, our Dutch students and the children had a ball. The sports outreach takes a break over the school holidays and Yorram and Annemike will be returning to Holland. We will miss them – they have really become part of the team.

Rainbow Smiles:
We took the wonderful children from Rainbow Smiles to the beach to celebrate the end of the school year.  We try and do beach days every summer because it’s a simple outing but the kids really enjoy it and we live in such a beautiful area of the world. It is so lovely to see these children, who have to cope with so much, carefree for an afternoon.


Other News

Volunteers:
We said ‘Au Revoir’ to Kathryn Vernon who has been serving with us for the past 3 months. We will miss her bubbly personality but know that we will see her again at some time in the future. We also had a visit from two English lovelies, Cosette and Lauren, who know Maz. They helped us for two-weeks and were very good and helping to sort lots of ticket cutting for our Hope 2012 music festival!

World AIDS Day across the globe:
In the UK our loyal team of fundraisers organised a fantastic evening of music and comedy which featured ‘special’ video clips from Tim and Maz. It raised a bit of cash and was thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended.

The Parlotones, the headline act at Hope 2012

Here in South Africa we were very excited to host a music festival. It was held here in Grabouw and featured some of the country’s top bands to raise awareness for World AIDS Day and Thembalitsha. The event attracted over 2000 people, went off without a hitch and resulted in some fantastic feedback. We are extremely thankful to all those who prayed for us in the planning of this event and the team of local volunteers who assisted us. It was a real leap of faith but was worth it just for the exposure. Check out pictures from the day on our facebook page. We are hoping to repeat the event again next year so watch this space!


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 (it doesn’t have to be cycling)!!!!! – 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

Thembalitsha Charity Tune!!
It doesn’t matter what country you are in. Everyone can benefit from this! The fantastically generous and talented folk of up and coming British band, Being Buffalo, have released a track especially for us! And it sounds great too! We get 50% of every sale so please let your friends and family know about this! You can find the track for download here:

http://beingbuffalo.bandcamp.com/album/hope-charity-download

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

mandela day at the thembalitsha projects in grabouw!

always cleaning windows

today we celebrated nelson mandela's birthday in style, south africans are encouraged to engage in 67 minutes of social responsibility, and as a charity who work with our communities in many different ways thembalitsha are always inundated by people, schools, organisations and companies and or their employees who are keen to help out for their 67 minutes.

maz shares our vision with the team from parliament

as we posted on monday our mandela day started early with a visit from the ACVV old age home but today not only did village of hope benefit from visitors our sister project, thembacare grabouw, also received some willing volunteers.

who's enjoying their 67 minutes the most?

the first to arrive at thembacare were some children from the local high school who had come to clean the windows, they even bought their own water from school!....

they were soon followed by a team of over 20 people from the south african parliament who had read about thembacare and the village of hope on the internet and were keen to come and see what we were involved in. after a visit to the inpatient unit some of the visitors took a trip out into the community to make a home visit with sister portia (our outpatient sister who is also responsible for the medical care of the children at the village of hope)...the rest of the team came up and played with the children (and their toys, see the picture of tutu playing on the trampoline!).

sr joyce receiving the gifts of bedding for thembacare

we then returned to say our goodbyes at thembacare where the team made a wonderful donation of some much needed new bed sheets and pillow cases with the commitment to continue to work towards some ongoing support for the projects which they were truly blown away by.

upon our return to thembacare we met the local grabouw rugby club who had provided the food for us to provide the hot meal which our patients enjoy as part of their nutritional diet on their road to recovery or as we support them in their last days of life.

cwp managers discussing who we can partner
during their mandela day visit

in the afternoon both projects received a visit from the CWP (community works programme) managers who were not only interested in viewing the projects during their mandela day 67 minutes but were interested in how both parties can benefit from the work that we are involved in to provide employment to the poorest of the poor who are on their government run programme.

thanks to all who came, for your wonderful gifts and also the promise of continued support, whether that be physical, financial or the promise to pray for us as we give our 67 minutes each and everyday!....and last but not least happy birthday nelson, God bless you not only today but for the legacy that you have left for the people of this country.