Mama Ntombi’s Community Projects (MNCP), our other 2016 focus project, helps impoverished communities around Pietermaritzburg in so many ways. They have recently received a wonderful donation – a 15-metre long container (valued at R100,000) where they can store all their Breakfast Club things, the Preschoolers material, chairs and tables, as well as the Library for their Book and Homework clubs.
The container was donated after MNCP featured on ‘The Big Favour’, a local radio show in South Africa that matches needs with donors. The wattle and daub room MNCP was using previously was falling apart and they had no idea how to even start renovating it. The huge new container was transported to its new home and put in place at no charge to MNCP. Check out some pictures on Mama Ntombi’s Community Projects facebook page!
The Chishawasha orphans’ project near Harare is one of our 2016 focus projects. The very bad drought in Zimbabwe has resulted in a poor harvest, adding further hardship. The project recently heard about a large group of children who were raiding the bins of the local boarding school, scavenging for food.
Some of these children were heading their households (i.e.no adults present) and weren't going to school. The project now pays their school fees and provides food packs as often as possible. But there are many children on the waiting list to attend the fortnightly Perekedza orphans’ club.
Our enormous thanks go to Bernwode News (a community organisation of villages near Oxford) for their very generous grant of £1000 to Cross Over, an education programme for very disadvantaged children in Zimbabwe.
The funds are being used towards the cost of producing a pop-up classroom. The pop-up is a steel cupboard on wheels which incorporates storage and unfolds to provide display boards and working surfaces. This will help Cross Over manage the lack of premises and enable them to extend their teaching model to other community groups. Getting the equipment built has proved to be one set of challenges after another but the first unit is almost ready (June 2016).
