How You Can Help

A big thank you to everyone who helped us before we moved out here with relieving us of all our furniture and our books! It was a great help!

St. Peter’s

We have a great facility at St. Peter’s – there’s lots of rooms in the building that can be used for all sorts of activities and a lovely garden right in the middle. It’s currently under-used during the week and we’d love to have more local groups using it.

Since we’ve been here we have welcomed a local AIDS project called Fikelela and a social enterprise that trains unemployed mothers to become traders and then provides them with Woolworths’ seconds clothing (M&S in the UK) to sell.

We do need equipment though. So we are currently fundraising for:

• a flip chart
• a data projector
• a second-hand Mac Mini for the church office
• some shelves/filing cabinets

If you think you can help at all do email Dave at david.meldrum@gmail.com

Local Projects

We are increasingly getting involved in local projects here in Mowbray and some further afield.

Mowbray Maternity Hospital

One of those projects is the Mowbray Maternity Hospital which is just next door to us. They are a government hospital that serves many of the townships in the Cape Town area. Many of the hundreds of women who come through their doors each month have nothing to wrap their babies in to take them home.

We are raising money to supply baby blankets which cost R15/R1.50 to the hospital for the mothers. Why not make a donation to provide some blankets? Alternatively, if you are coming over this way any donations of newborn or premature baby clothes would be great.

Baphumelele Educare Centre

Another of the projects we are involved in is the Educare Centre (or pre-school) at the Baphumelele Children’s Home based in Khayelitsha. When Toni Kurk came and stayed with us for 5 weeks this is where she was volunteering.

There are two ways to help this project. Firstly, there are 10 children who are orphans who stay at the Children’s Home who are of pre-school  age and should be attending Grade R at the Educare Centre. As they are orphans there isn’t anyone to pay their school fees. One child’s place at the pre-school costs just R160/£16 a month. We would love to be able to pay for all 10 children to have a pre-school place for a year.

The second way to help is books. We have found books incredibly expensive to buy in South Africa. So for families that are living on R300/£30 a month, books are not an option. So children just don’t have access to books – they aren’t reading.

It’s the same at the pre-school – the 60 plus children are sharing a small number of books.

We just find that really sad. We remember how many books we had access to at home and school when we were children – the thought of having no books to read is just shocking.

Monica, the principle, would love to be able to send children home to their parents with books to read but it’s just not possible at the moment.

We want to be able to provide the educare centre with books from reading schemes that they can use to teach the children to read. If this is something you might be interested in drop us an email and we’ll have a think about the best way to sort it out.

Personal Things

If you happen to be heading out our way at any point – and you are all most welcome to come and visit – and you want to bring us something to remind us of the UK, there are a couple of things we do miss. These include:

• a bottle of real ale and the latest issue of ‘The Word’ magazine (for Dave)
• malteasers, jelly babies and jaffa cakes (for Bev)
• new worship music
• copies of Word magazines (for Dave)