Celebrating Mandela Day: community spirit in action
At SA Good News we postponed our celebration by a day (sorry for that!), but we compensated by spending 120 minutes finding a way of making a contribution to the local Midlands Community College. Started by local farmers Lal and Pauline Green some 30 years ago, the College offers a wide range of courses and specialises in giving local kids with potential the opportunity to upgrade their Maths and Science ‘points’ so that they can access decent tertiary institutions. Assisting 5730 learners annually, the College now has 60 full-time boarders. (See www.midlandscommunitycollege.co.za). Hopefully we can assist on an ongoing basis with career guidance and understanding the wider challenges in SA! (Make every day a Mandela day)
A few, but great Mandela Day Stories
General Electric South Africa (GESA) based in Midrand, celebrated by working with the learners at Bonwelong Primary School in Ivory Park Tembisa. Volunteers from GE were hard at work assembling a mobile library, fully equipped with books and the necessary resources. In addition, the Grade R classrooms and aftercare facility were repainted and refurbished, to create a suitable child friendly learning environment.
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille and her cabinet members donned overalls as they spent 67 minutes cleaning windows, floors and cots at the city's Red Cross Children's Hospital in celebration of Nelson Mandela's 93rd birthday. (source: BuaNews)
Volunteers from the Medscheme Group based in Florida, Roodepoort helped the Siyabonga Dorah’s Ark Foundation to revive its food garden. The Siyabonga Dorah’s Ark Foundation is a non profit organisation which focuses on caring for abandoned, abused and orphaned children. It started out as a soup kitchen until its founder, Mama Dorah Mazibuko, realised the need for a safe haven for orphaned and vulnerable children in the area. The foundation houses 46 children between the ages of 2 to 18 years.
Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) staff spent two days renovating the Matseke Primary School in Atteridgeville. When pupils arrived at school on Monday, they were greeted with splashes of colour at every turn, what was broken when they left for the school holidays had been repaired and the school was spotless. (source: BuaNews)
Cynthia Hitsa from Duduza shed a tear when the City of Ekurhuleni broke the news to her that as part of celebrating Nelson Mandela International Day she will be receiving a house from the municipality after it was discovered she was staying alone in a shack. Another elderly woman whose lost dream to own a descent house was restored today is 84-year-old woman Emily Makhalemele also from Duduza. She received a brand new two bedroom house which has a kitchen, lounge and bathroom. The municipality joined forces with a number of stakeholders to make Makhalemele’s dream come true. They include Community Development Workers, community members, Machike Construction and Kata Kata Building Construction. The house was built as part of a Community Housing Project.
In other activities four households in Daveyton whose houses had been affected by severe weather conditions received some much-deserved attention, when members of the mayoral committee and senior management from Ekurhuleni rolled their sleeves doing good deeds as part of observing 67 minutes for Mandela campaign. Thirty one families will from today be able to enjoy bathing in warm water as the municipality started installing low pressure solar water heaters in Palm Ridge, Vosloorus and Thokoza. The municipality also handed over clothing and toiletry items at Zanele Mbeki Home (former Tienie Foster) in Dunnottar where some of the survivors of the Struisbult Care Centre fire which left people 12 dead over a month ago, are being accommodated. The items were donated by employees.
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, Minister Maria Ntuli, CEO of the South African Social Security Agency, Virginia Peterson and department officials, spent the day cleaning and painting the Bophelong Drop-in-Centre at Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa Complex in Soshanguve, a centre that takes care of vulnerable and orphaned children. Officially opened in 2005, the non-profit organisation centre renders services to 114 vulnerable children aged between eight to 18 years (source: BuaNews)
Local IT company Dariel Solutions has partnered with the Thuthuzela Aid Community Centre to uplift the lives of orphans and abandoned children through various projects that will be implemented during the week of the 18th to 22nd& July 2011. The 6 key initiatives created by the company include designing and hosting an official Website for the centre that will allow for donors to access banking details as well as additional information on the centre, providing each child with a personalised gift – one they can keep and treasure and have as there own, creating food parcels to provide the centre with some relief by offering them a 1 to 3 months supply of food that they require for the children, building cupboards and storage facilities to create much needed space to enhance the children’s learning facilities, collecting all the necessary required to make a full first aid kit, as well as providing toiletries and standard household items for the centre and classroom renovation, in an aim to provide the children with a learning space that is adequate to enable them learn effectively.
Probationers, parolees and inmates from Baviaanspoort correctional centre used their 67 minutes to show their community they are prepared to work hard to gain their forgiveness. The former Baviaanspoort inmates rolled up their sleeves, cleaning Mamelodi Hospital on Mandela Day. (source: BuaNews)
Throughout the month of July, approximately 600 Nedbank employees will be actively volunteering their time across 16 current Nedbank Local Hero projects in South Africa. The bank also encourages employees who are unable to volunteer to donate funds to a range of charities through the internal Payroll Giving platform
In 2010, a Pretoria-based NGO and celebrities marked Mandela Day by helping the girls of the Tshwane Home of Hope shelter. This year, it was the girls’ turn to assist those less fortunate than themselves. Thousands of immigrants line up at the Marabastad Home Affairs offices every day, braving the cold and enduring great discomfort as they strive to legalise their presence in this country. The crowds that gather outside the premises, including mothers with small babies, have no access to ablution facilities and spend hours in the queues, sometimes overnight, afraid to leave lest they lose their places in the queue. In the spirit of friendship, and to counter the negative perception of South Africa as a xenophobic country, the girls will provided people in the queues with a hot, hearty meal, as well as distributed essential items such as dry food, disposable nappies and toiletries.
Jeannie D and help2read launched "Reading Adventures" at Lentegeur Library as part of the 67 Minutes for Mandela campaign. The Reading Adventures programme seeks to increase the capacity of library services to offer new reader development activities to school age children and their families. Presentations will be made to parents at each school on how to help their children develop a love for reading and how to make use of public libraries in order to achieve this. Puppetry performances will also take place at schools and libraries to help encourage in each child a love of reading and an appreciation for creative expression. Since its inception, help2read has turned more than 6000 of these struggling learners into avid readers in 100 schools across a broad spectrum, such as Muizenberg Junior School, Isikhokelo, Rosmead Central, Bellville, Bridgeville, Schotchekloof and Islamia.
*Conclusion – I Want to do something but I don’t know where to Start or Help (IWISH)
Mandela Day is the first Day to be sanctioned by the UN honouring the contribution of an individual.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation in combination with the International Marketing Council and www.forgood.co.za, have developed a new website www.playyourpart.co.za which will enable anyone who wants to do something, to ‘network’ with like minded people in their geographical area to make a difference to a particular cause.
So, if you missed the boat on Mandela Day, or you want to maintain the momentum of what you already did on Mandela day, go check it out! Just imagine if we could make everyday a Mandela Day, what a different country (and world) we would live in!
Congratulations to all those citizens out there who rolled up their sleeves for 67 minutes. At SA Good News we salute you!