October News

Once again this month has flown by! It doesn't seem a minute since we were in England celebrating Maz's big birthday with friends and family and we are already at the end of October and thinking about Christmas! At least the sun is starting to warm our bodies again and the blossom on the fruit trees on our surrounding farms is a sight to behold. However winter has one final fling since we returned - we awoke last week to a snowy view of the local mountains!

We firstly want to thank the core team here at the Village who allowed us to spend some much needed time away with the confidence that the day-to-day stuff would be undertaken. Thanks Rob, Em, Tim, Mel, the amazing house moms and maintenance team you really are all stars!

As always our children's unit remains our main focus, however there always seems to be something to fix and this month we have had to sort out the septic tank which is used by the children. This wasn't a pleasant task but with the help of our local plumber, digger driver and trusty volunteers we managed to sort that with a few new trenches which we hope will also drain our top field to allow us to proceed with some agriculture projects.

There has also been some exciting progress around our first Ukuqala house, with two big work parties working on filling then flattening the land and installing some much needed turf around the building. We have to be intentional in setting aside time to complete this type of work as our daily chores can overwhelm and run away with us. We are indebted to our friends Graeme and Charles Cherry who have been very helpful in getting this sorted for us with the supply of soil, turf, plant hire and labour.

On the children’s front we are now back up tour full complement of nine children! This week another two year old girl arrived who is in need of our support whilst she is stabilised on her medication and one of our older girls is making the big transition to being placed back home. She has been with us at the Village of Hope since we opened and before that spent her early life at Thembacare in Athlone. There has been little contact over the years with her family and unfortunately we heard the sad news that her mother passed away just a couple of weeks ago. In spite of this she is making some good progress with her weekly weekend visits to her paternal aunt who will care for her when she leaves us in December.

The new Dutch students are settling in really well, and they have also been joined by an ex HAN social work student who is spending some time working with Maz and Mel on the children’s cases as she seeks to become a full time social worker here in Grabouw.

Community Work
Sports Outreach:
The sports students have really helped to push along the development of our outreach, working with Jason, our new part time employee, to re-establish clubs in Rooidakke. It is now attended by around 50 children a week, as well as a rugby outreach to some older guys. They are also working with Michael in Waterworks and have even started a girls netball team in that area which is a brand new venture.

We were also blessed with a ton of sports gear, bought over by our latest mission team from the USA, the kids have already received some head bands as a simple thank you for attending the clubs and the kids enjoyed wearing their new training bibs at the Iraq club this week.

Rainbow Smiles:
Our volunteers and students are also working hard in the running and planning of our Rainbow Smiles HIV support group which runs each and every Friday afternoon and we are grateful to an ex volunteer, Heather from Australia, who has produced an amazing resource for us to use during the weekly planning programme....thanks Heather! – It must be over 500 pages long!!!!

Other News
Volunteers:
Australians seem to be getting mentions all over the place in this newsletter, as we were joined by Jacqui for 3 months. Yes, you guessed it, from Australia! She has joined our other volunteers, Kathryn and Martha, just wondering where all the male volunteers are at the moment...If you would like to come and join us for a short, medium or longer term trip then as always please get in touch with Emily...see contact details below.

Cycling from London to Paris!
Last month we had a team cycling from Aylesbury to Brighton to raise funds for us, this month Danny Gowing cycled from London to Paris to raise funds for us. Thanks Danny! We can tell you that your aches and pains were worth every penny. If anyone else wants to hop on a bike to raise money for us we will really appreciate it!!!

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

South Africa

HOPE 2012

Top SA bands are going to be making some noise for us this World AIDS Day (1st December).
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!
Line up: The Parlotones, Watershed, The Muffinz, Tailor, Margaret’s Daughter
Get your tickets at www.hope.org.za/2012

England

If you can’t quite make it out to South Africa for World AIDS Day we have another equally attractive suggestion for you! The Thembalitsha UK guys are organising a Celebration of Hope
The evening will consist of live music and comedy from a top BBC standup.
Tickets are only £10 and there will be drinks and snacks available. Saturday, 1 December at 19:30, Aylesbury, Bucks
Please contact Jessica on 077 3883 1507 to book your tickets

Worldwide

A Song Of Hope!
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

providing new hope to another child in need...

the first meal for our new child, given
by our house mom at the village of hope

some days the day to day chores that come with running a home for 9 children infected or affected by HIV, AIDS and TB, along side our daily sports and health awareness programmes into the local formal and informal settlements, can become so overwhelming that we have little time to really stand back to see the ways in which we are really making a difference to the people we have been called to work with..

...however there are some days where our eyes are opened to the amazing work that is undertaken at the village of hope, and today is one of those days as we successful see the fruits of the work of placing stabilised children home with families.....what do i mean by that?....

...well due to the recent successful placements of some of our longer term children (see their stories by clicking here, or here, or here) we have been able to create some more bed space to provide accommodation for more needy children, and today we are back up to our full compliment as we have welcomed another 2 year old girl into our home.

this dear little girl will be loved and cared for by our wonderful house moms and we hope that she will soon be back home with her family after we work with the local day hospital in addressing her immediate medical needs.

a visit by a flying dutchman..

henk, marlies and our new bus!

we are so grateful to all our sponsors and donors who enable us to undertake the work that we feel called to at the village of hope, many of you give funds help with the day to day running costs, which cover our house moms salaries, children's food bills, electric and vehicle maintenance etc etc but sometimes people give to a specific project or requirement.

it is also really really great when those who donate can come and make a visit to see where their hard earned cash is being spent and last week we had such a visit from henk from the charity 'wings of support' who had blessed us with part of the funds that we used to purchase our new minibus (see previous blog around that here).

wings of support as a charity set up and run by employees of the dutch airline KLM and it was good for henk to meet up with one of dutch students, marlies, who is studying with us for 10 months working around her social work degree.

thanks wings of support and thanks henk for making the time to come and visit us all the way up the mountain in grabouw.

visits from local dignitaries

thembacare grabouw make the front page

sorry that we have been so quiet since we returned home, but for those of you that follow us via this blog or have visited the village of hope project here in grabouw you will know that our days and therefore weeks seem to run away with us. added to that but just before we returned from england my (tim) laptop's hard drive gave up the ghost so i have been without my own internet connection which has hindered my prolific blogging!....however that is a poor excuse so whilst maz is enjoying an evening at the school of hope awards i thought i would share a bit of news, prior to the october newsletter which will be out soon, this majors around our appearance on the front and middle pages of last weeks local newspaper, the elgin grabouwer.



major visit with the HAN and UWC delegation at the
village of hope (in the rain!)

i say we appeared as in the royal we, meaning both thembacare and the village of hope, but news is news and we are so closely linked to our sister project that the we is really we....anyway the front page news was the fact that following their mandela day visit to our two projects in grabouw staff from the cape town parliament felt led to purchase a much needed hoist to help our staff manage the lifting and movement of the patients in our inpatient palliative care unit.

the major and maz

the other news, which took up the middle pages, and included a nice little article about the work that our former volunteers, daz and lisa, are doing with a little creche, was all around the visit of our major, chris punt, to the town. the visit was initiated by the HAN university team to showcase the work that their students are involved in.

the village of hope are currently proving placements for 2 sports students and a social work student, as well as a past HAN social work student who is volunteering with us at the moment and therefore a visit by the HAN delegation and therefore the major was always on the cards.

the delegation also included tutors and facilitators from the university of the western cape who we not only showed around our children's unit but also informed about our work in the community via our sports outreach and thembacare home based care team...the major also enjoyed lunch with us and had a long chat with myself and maz around the needs of our town and the ways in which the thembalitsha foundation are helping local and national government, and their departments, to provide much needed help in the health and education sector.

although some photos were taken for the paper it is very hard to see maz so therefore i have added a photo with her and the major together.!

new arrivals....

our new arrival and house mom (trulene)

myself and maz have only just arrived back to our wonderful village of hope project here in grabouw and we have been greeted by two sets of new arrivals. firstly our little cat, called quiet simply 'Cat' (as opposed to her sister who is called 'Other Cat') has had her first litter of kittens, 5 in all which might prove a little more difficult when coming to name them!....however the greatest event to happen since we returned home was this morning as we were able to offer a new home to a dear little 3 year old girl who is in need of some safe care whilst she is stabilised from a medical condition.

as with all things related to our children we can't provide you with her name or a full face photo but please know that given the circumstances she is doing very well and we will ensure that we provide the best care we can as she stays with us on a 3 month court order.

the hope (as with all our children) is that we will be able to place her home with some loving family members and maz, mel, along with our social work student and another social work volunteer will now undertake make sure that that reunification goes as smoothly as possible.

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

Reality Bites

Mummy Netty taking good care of the new arrival

We are always very excited to have a new admission to the children's unit and last week we were able to welcome a gorgeous little two-year old girl (although she looks more like a one year old than two because she is so under-developed). She has settled in really well, is smiley, affectionate and definitely has some dance moves on her! She even has a pronounceable name which is always a relief for us English speakers!

She was referred to us because her mother, who is HIV positive, was too ill and had been taken to hospital because of TB. The social worker had said that the mother looked like she wouldn't survive much longer but we have often been told such things and then seen dramatic restorations to health so we didn't give it too much attention.

This week we heard that the mother had died. Just like that.  Of course, we don't know the reasons why this lady got so ill but it does make me wonder....Was she born with HIV or was she given it unknowingly? How did she find out? Did she know to take her ARVs regularly without fail? Was she getting any support from anyone? How did she get so poorly with TB? Did she even know she had TB or did she think it was just a cough and ignore it? If this woman had been born in another country or in this country but with money would her life have been the same?

We do have to be thankful that there is a possibility of this gorgeous girl going to live with her Grandmother in the Eastern Cape but it still doesn't detract from the fact that she will never know her mother....in this life anyway.

Emily