Dear  All,

I returned last week from a 10 day visit to South Africa – a visit that focused on two projects that Destination Southern Africa (DSA) had selected to benefit from a very successful fundraising effort – the African Art Sojourn held recently in Tucson, Arizona. I am including all of you in this email – ‘you’ being folks that have been interested in supporting from the start, or folks that have joined us in the recent months to help make a big difference.

A brief history on what we are doing…

Holy Family Orphanage and Malabelong Primary School in Limpopo Province are two communities that I selected to benefit directly from monies we raised at the African Sojourn Art Sale. I selected the two communities after much research and also with the intention of being able to continue to support them over the years. Location was key – key in the sense that they were in remote areas, but not too remote so that visitors would not be able to visit them. Both communities are within an hour from some of South Africa’s top private game lodges – safari camps that draw most people to Southern Africa. To ensure ongoing support we have designed a ”Real Africa Experience” tour that takes guests staying at luxury game lodges to Malabelong or the Orphanage between their game drives. The cost of this tour covers the guide, and vehicle and the balance goes directly into the fund that supports Malabelong and the Orphanage. Thanks to the exposure through a mini documentary done by Sandy Levine on the ‘projects’ we have found new support – most recently Rotary International and a school teacher in New Jersey, who have both taken on projects within the initial projects.

Both the primary school and the orphanage received +/- $14 000 each towards improving their current situations. My visit last week was to identify where best the money could be used.

Holy Family Orphanage:

In meeting with Sisters who run the orphanage they have requested that the monies be spent on playground equipment – of which the older kids ( 5-16 years) have none. The orphanage is home to 70 children who live on the property under the care of the Sisters and other staff from the surrounding area. Some of you have visited the Orphanage will agree that keeping 70 kids busy after school and on the weekends is a challenge for the staff. Playground equipment will provide an outlet for these young kids to be young kids, and I agreed 100% with the Sisters to spend the monies raised on such.

The Orphanage constantly needs new clothes, books, videos, sports equipment etc – but these are things we can collect through fundraising drives – like that of Hara Paul and Linda Quigley in New Jersey, Antoinette Lambe in Johannesburg, and Linda Nieuwoudt at Kuname River Lodge.

Malabelong Primary School:

Initially I had planned to use the monies raised to build a vegetable garden that would feed the 800 school kids, or rather supplement their lunch meal of cabbage and corn. The garden was planted before the monies were raised and yielded a great crop of a variety of fruits and vegetables. Kuname River Lodge – a luxury game lodge nearby, kindly and generously took the time and money to get the garden going. The garden is managed and cared for by the local community and the ongoing plan is to not only feed the schoolchildren, but also to empower the local women with a market to sell the vegetables and fruits to their own community and then to luxury lodges in the area. Earlier this year in April once the garden was planted, the local municipality ( government) caught wind of our initiative and quickly installed an irrigation system. Back here in Tucson, a local Rotarian, Jim Aslin saw the video produced by Sandy Levine and offered to support the school. A local Rotarian, Ivan Falleyn in South Africa who belongs to the Rotary Club of Tzaneen, some 60 miles from the school, have connected and will be funding a water harvesting project to irrigate the vegetable garden as well as install a pump to provide the power to distribute the water evenly.

Quickly we realized that we had enough money to take care of something bigger, and probably more necessary in the immediate terms.

The school has a number of ‘out houses’ or ‘long drops’ – 16 exactly which the school kids use as their bathrooms. These ‘toilets’ are simply holes in concrete slabs with no doors, no running water to wash hands… unhygienic and at the very least unhealthy. With the help of Grant Yoko from Davies Civils and Hanroe Erasmus from Kuname River Lodge, we will use the majority of the money raised to date to build proper toilets, install hand basins and soap dispensers to wash hands, and so begin educating the local community that hygiene and health are key to a better life… Hanroe is the manager of Kuname Lodge, and he will oversee the building of the new toilets – and update me on the progress.

Coincidentally whilst I was visiting the school and the orphanage, a shipment of some +/- 40 boxes of school supplies arrived from New Jersey. Hara Paul, took it upon herself to get her school to collect supplies, box them and ship them all the way to Hoedspruit Post Office. Shipping costs were covered in most part by Hara, and I am happy to say that I was there along with Antoinette Lambe, Grant Yoko and Linda Nieuwoudt  to distribute the crayons, books, puzzles etc to the school and orphanage. You can only truly experience the gratitude that these local communities have for such donations in person – and hopefully some of the school kids in New Jersey that donated and collected the supplies will someday get to visit the school and orphanage, as it makes all the hard work that much more rewarding.