A Gift of a "Brighter Life"

 

Give a “Gift of a Brighter Life” this holiday season when you choose to donate to Hope For Limpopo. All proceeds are used to provide impoverished women and children in Limpopo Province, South Africa with immediate emergency relief as well as a means to a better self-sustaining lifestyle.

Your tax deductible gift, great or small, will be used towards:

• $50 per month ($600 a year): Give a gift of education. Improve a child’s access to education, opportunity and a brighter future.

 

• $120: Give a gift of a Goat.  Help a family in need with basic daily needs. Goats provide nutrition and income producing opportunities.   

 

• $100: Give a gift of a Waterproof Mattress. Provide children with a clean comfortable place to rest at night.

• $100: Give a gift to the Women’s HIV Support Group. Provide training and a safe place to explore and share related concerns for HIV positive women.

• $50: Give a gift of a Food Parcel Care Package.  Provide a needy family of five with basic essentials; sugar, tea, cooking oil, tins of fish, baked beans, peanut butter, jam, salt, rice, macaroni, fresh fruit and vegetables to help alleviate hunger.

 

• $20: Give a gift of a Chicken. Provide families with nutrition and income producing opportunities.

• $10: Give a gift of Nutritional Supplements. Provide a nutritional supplement to rape survivors (E-pap) to enhance energy and support the immune system.

• $5: Give a gift of a Rape Survival Care Package: Provide woman and children with comfort and help restore their dignity after a difficult situation. Packages include a washcloth, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, body lotion and new undergarments.

• $5: Give a gift of a Comfort Toy.  Provide children with comfort and support while dealing with the stressful and difficult aftermath of rape.  

Give a general donation or specify a ‘Cause’ you’d like to support. Contribute in a friend’s name and receive a ready-to-mail card explaining that a “gift of a Brighter Life” has been given in your recipient’s name.

Your tax-deductible gift can be made through PayPal on the “donate” section of our website at

http://www.hopeforlimpopo.org/main/donate/donateonline/.

Thank you!
 

 

 

 

New Mattresses Have Arrived!

The New Mattresses Have Arrived!

The children of the Tshilidzini Special School (TSS) face many challenges every day of their lives. The school houses and educates 481 hearing, sight and physically impaired and impoverished children from the Limpopo Province in South Africa. The daily government stipend of $1.34 per student does not go far when the needs include food, housing, clothing and education. When we last visited the school it was in desperate need of repair and school supplies were meager but the staff was dedicated and the children were beaming. The dormitory was undeniably dismal with its urine stained mattresses reeking of incontinence and misery. Consequently, when the Headmaster requested new mattresses for the children, HFL quickly set out to accommodate them. Our aggressive research uncovered waterproof, hospital grade mattresses and although the price of $100 per mattress was steep, we knew that these eager pupils deserved a good night’s sleep if they were to be prepared to be attentive learners. HFL followers matched a $2500 grant from Newman’s Own Foundation and the first 50 mattresses were purchased, delivered, and gratefully received. Though we have a long way to go to provide adequate sleeping arrangements for the remaining 431 children, we are grateful to all who helped us begin to meet this urgent need.

Please consider helping us to meet the goal of supplying mattresses for every needy child. If you would like to purchase a mattress or share the purchase of a mattress for one of the TSS students, please contact us.

Thank You.

Like us on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/HopeforLimpopo.
See HFL blogs at http://hopeforlimpopo.blogspot.com/.
Visit HFL website at http://www.hopeforlimpopo.org/.
Contact us at info@hopeforlimpopo.org.

Unloading New Mattresses

New Mattresses!

Old Ones!

One Small Step

In August we challenged our HFL friends and followers to seek the smallest effort they could make in the name of “Ubuntu” (caring, sharing, and being in harmony…) Thank you to all who responded. We’ve heard that some of you ‘liked’ us on Facebook; some encouraged friends to join our mailing list; one young follower shared our HFL story with his classmates; another posted our website at the “water cooler” and one faithful follower is considering making an “inexpensive craft” with schoolchildren … a beaded bracelet or bookmark with HFL logo and an explanation of ‘ubuntu’. We’ve enjoyed hearing about “The smallest effort one might trade for the feeling of Ubuntu.” Savor these efforts and you’ll soon look forward to similar small moments!

Another successful Healing Touch Program in Limpopo!

Enjoy Cary & Barb's Healing Touch summer program update!

  Healing Massage in Limpopo

Happy 3rd Birthday, Anaia Miller!

We are forever grateful to Anaia Miller who is our first “in lieu of birthday gifts” benefactor. Anaia’s parents chose to honor her first birthday with a request for monetary gifts to Hope for Limpopo and we will always remember their inspirational act of kindness.

If you’d like to consider encouraging friends and/or relatives to make a donation to HFL in lieu of any holiday, wedding, birthday, anniversary gift or as a memorial contribution then please contact us or go to 'Charity Birthday Hope for Limpopo' site. We will work with you to create a special recognition in the contributor’s name. What a generous, memorable way to honor a loved one!

Happy 3^rd Birthday, Anaia!

Healing Touch Program

Last August Cary and Barb, trained masseuses and founders of Healing Touch Massage Program, visited several villages in the Limpopo Province. With the assistance of VMS staffers they successfully trained villagers to offer the healing touch to other needy women. This summer Cary returned to Vhutshilo Mountain School and spent 3 busy weeks providing refresher workshops to last year’s graduates as well as introducing massage to 30+ new caregivers. We understand that Cary’s efforts were widely successful and that there are already 30 new villagers who are anxious for next year’s classes. Thank you, Cary, for exposing our Caregivers to the healing power of touch!

A Challenge: Can You Help with One Small Step?

We have always acknowledged that Hope for Limpopo, Inc. is not OUR non-profit. We have sent it out to the universe and are confident that interested parties will find their own comfortable way of participating.

Today we are asking you to examine your inner “Ubuntu” or “caring, sharing & being in harmony….”. But in so asking, we are interested in finding the smallest effort you can make for the sake of and in the name of ‘Ubuntu’.

We are asking each one of you to think about the contacts you’ve made, your talents, your interests, your abilities, your friends, your family, your classmates, your business associates.

We are asking you to find the one small thing that will benefit Hope for Limpopo in the name of ‘ubuntu’?  Something that you can do in 1 minute, 5 minutes but in no more than 10 minutes. We were inspired by Telana Simpson’s ‪onematchstick.blogspot.com an interesting concept that caused us to wonder ‘What is the smallest effort one could trade for that feeling of Ubuntu? ’.

Let us know the smallest thing that you have done to benefit HFL and share with us at info@ hopeforlimpopo.com

Experience that universal bond that connects all humanity. We are excited to see where your one small ubuntu step will take us.

What is ‘UBUNTU’?

“Ubuntu (oo-boon-too) 
I am because we are”

Ubuntu is a traditional African belief and a term for human-ness, for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation. It is all about the essence of being human. Ubuntu embraces caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another. Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, “…"…(Ubuntu) is the essence of being human. We believe that a person is a person through other persons (and) that my humanity is caught up, inextricably bound up in yours…it speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. One seeks to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging.”

Hope for Limpopo exists because our faithful followers practice “ubuntu”. Whether you send us a donation or a word of encouragement or perhaps you take precious time to read our blogs, check out our website or spread the word by ‘liking’ us on facebook, please know that you are practicing ‘unbuntu’ and we are grateful.

“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” (I am because we are)”.  THANK YOU!

Congratulations Cristina Kessler!

Cristina Kessler, award-winning children’s book author and longtime loyal friend to Hope for Limpopo, Inc., has done it again!  Her book, My Great-Grandmother’s Gourd, has been selected as the second-grade book for the 2014-2015 anthology of Junior Great Books.

Many of Ms. Kessler’s children’s books are set in Africa but all send an important message. She tells us that “My Great-Grandmother's Gourd is set in Sudan and tells the story of modern technology replacing traditional ways, and ultimately the wisdom of combining the old and the new. It’s based on a true event, and shares the universal theme of “Don’t mess with my grandmother and family loyalty.”

Cristina Kessler is a magical storyteller and a favorite workshop presenter. Please check out her website for more information on this talented and cherished friend as well as info on her other award-winning books.

More on our Youngest Aids Activist

 Vhuhwavho Nevhungoni, though merely 14 years old has already made an impact on the lives of many young people living in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. By turning her back on the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS, she fearlessly speaks out in favor of the imperative practice of taking ARV medications faithfully and without embarrassment or fear of discrimination.

Born to a mother who died at 35 (when Vhuhwavho was 2 years old) from the HIV+ virus, “Woo” (as she is affectionately called) learned to take responsibility for her own ARVs at the tender age of 4 years.  Her foster mother, Sue Anne Cook, Director of the Vhutshilo Mountain School taught Woo the critical necessity of daily medication management.

Once Woo learned to oversee her own daily medications she was invited to the Siloam Hospital AIDS Clinic to teach and encourage other children to do the same. She spoke tirelessly with positivity and encouragement though she was but a young child herself.

Recognizing the need to teach other young children how to live with HIV/AIDS and how to flourish with the support of other similarly afflicted children, she and Sue Anne created a pediatric Anti Retro Viral (ARV) support group for children.  The support group has now grown to 150 young boys and girls (62 of whom are teenagers). Because of the large numbers, and the problems with transport, “satellite” support groups have been started at 4 clinics in other villages. The original 22 youngsters who are now teenagers facilitated the support group meetings at the “satellite” clinics. This has made a huge impact on the new children as they are so open about their status and look so healthy.

Woo’s accomplishments do not stop here.  We encourage you to read more about this amazing young lady and will invite you to correspond with her directly. Watch for our next blog.