Supporting Children living in poverty in South Africa

I spent 4 years living in South Africa and have been back many times to visit the charities I worked 
with when we lived there.

There are numerous charities in South Africa supporting children living in poverty in many different ways.

The Viva Foundation who supply affordable education and support the local community with a 
variety of projects. Including camping in a township, taking part in an arts project.

Dignity Dreams providing women with washable and reusable sanitary products. I reviewed them.

Santa Shoebox Project collect and distribute 110,000 Christmas gifts throughout the country each 
year. My Santa Shoebox journey.

Kungwini Welfare Organisation provide residential care for adults and children with learning 
difficulties, as well as providing education in their local community. I first started making scarves 
with them in 2014 raising funds for supplies for the workshop

I'm back in South Africa in September 2018. I've funded my own trip and will be staying with friends as I've done previously, since we relocated to Dubai.

What I'll be doing as well as visiting and supporting Kungwini and Santa Shoebox is to visit the 
children in the townships that I've met through these organisations over the years and bring a little  
extra happiness into their lives.

This could be through painting a classroom, holding a birthday party, donating toiletries and or 
educational supplies and I'd like you to help me succeed by donating £5 in exchange for a handmade scarf. That's it, that's all you have to do, just visit my PayPal account and donate.

In exchange for your £5, I'll select a scarf at random that I've made and post it to you. I'll tweet out a 
thank you, post the total amount raised, provide invoices and post photos online (with permission) of 
the children who have received your donation. Every penny raised will be spent directly on children 
living in poverty.

Visit my Paypal account, donate and then message me with your address on:

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What else could you do with the price of two cups of coffee

Last year I visited South Africa for 6 weeks to work with a children's charity, The Santa Shoebox Project, who source and deliver over 100,000 christmas gifts every year to children living in poverty, that I'd been involved with for 4 years while I lived there. I paid my own air fare, borrowed a car from friends and had access to a transit van kindly donated by Ford SA which included fuel costs. I fund raised in advance and while I was there. The only other expense I had was my food and drink.

Most mornings I picked up 2 coffees on my way to collect the transit, one for me and one for my friend. I paid 44 rand.

I love a latte when I'm out, I stop at the local garage on my way to work every morning and buy one every afternoon on my way home. It costs me 28 Dirhams.

In the UK 2 lattes costs on average £5.20.

What else could you do with that money? Well if I stop drinking 2 latte's a day, within 6 months I would have enough money for a flight from Dubai to South Africa so I could support some of the many facilities I've been involved with over the years.

The cost of 2 lattes in South Africa purchases a months worth of electricity which enables a student to study after school for their matric.

6 lattes will purchase a pack of reusable sanitary pads from Dignity Dreams to enable young girls to continue their education by remaining in school.

8 lattes will purchase a christmas gift for a child living in poverty or provide a child with a birthday gift with The Viva Foundation.

With the current exchange rate, your money would go even further. In fact twice as far.

I'd like to invite you to join me and think twice about that latte you're going to buy and decide to donate the money instead to support good causes in South Africa.

                           

If you would like to donate you can do so here via paypal or using the Donate button on my blog.

Coping with your period without sanitary products?

Can you imagine what would happen if you took 5-7 days off work or school every single month?

In South Africa this is a reality for 100’s and 1000’s if not millions of women every single month. In fact we are talking about 4 million girls who can’t afford to buy sanitary products

How long does the average period last? Well that’s how many days young girls miss every month of school, their education, and their freedom.

40% of girls drop out of school by the age of 14 due to absenteeism when they have their periods.

73% of girls aged 11 have no idea what a menstrual cycle is and aged 11- 14 and 86% of girls have no idea they are fertile when their periods start and during their period.

If you can’t afford to provide food, clothing and struggle to put a roof over your family’s head, how do you find money every month to buy sanitary products for yourself or your daughter?

Dignity Dreams, run by Sandra Millar, is an organisation tackling the problems of affordable sanitary products. Not only does a Diginity Dream pack reduce the risks of infections from young girls using dirty rags and newspapers, it cuts down on the number of school days missed, therefore  allowing girls to continue their education, rather than dropping out due to so many days being missed and tackling issues of poverty further on in life. The production of the Dignity Dream packs enables small businesses in the manufacturing of the packs.

What does a Dignity Dream pack include?

Presented in a colourful drawstring bag:

3 pairs of pants

6 beautiful, feminine pads, folded to look like a handkerchief or small wallet. The pads are waterproof and have wings and fasten securely with a press stud.

A plastic zip lock bag for soiled pads.

An instruction leaflet.

 

An average period lasts for 5 days using approximately 5 pads per day, equating to 25 pads per month at the cost of R40 per month, R480 per year.    

A pack of Dignity Dreams pads cost R140 for a set of 6 pads which will last up to 5 years. Making a saving of R340 in the first year alone. The government have set the basic minimum wage at R2500-R2950 per month. The average, bus and taxi costs are R650 per month. Take off child care costs of R200 a month and add in food and water and education, forget clothing, more than 2 sets is a luxury for most people, but at least they don't have to budget for electricity and water as they just don't have it supplied in the townships.

The reality of this is at the end of the month, there is no money for luxury items such as sanitary pads, there may not even be enough money just for food.

So what can you do to help? 

You can visit Dignity Dreams and see some of the fantastic work they do in local communities. They also make the packs themselves giving valuable work to local people who are trained by Raisibe Welhemina Ratlou a seamstress, who also over seas quality control and has been instrumental in gathering information from the townships and informal settlements.

To make payments direct to Dignity Dreams please add the SWIFT code SBZAZAJJ and mark you donation CR so we can let you all know how many packs were donated. You can also make a paypal donation to Angel of Hope by clicking here, marking your donation as DD, as I am fund raising for other projects also.