This is such a blessing! Thank you so much! –Margaret Ngcangca, Founder of the “Home of Joy” orphanage, Grahamstown
On Monday, September 21st, the VSA celebrated the International Day of Peace. Like every year, we wanted to do something great and positive for the local community in the Joza Township. We usually set up a Peace Day Concert where students of several schools participate with self written songs about peace and friendship. Due to some major funding problems, we had to find a different solution this year. We asked our learners from the SDA Primary School if they had any ideas on how to give something back to the community and they had: To cook some fresh and selfmade food and give it to the local orphanage “Home of Joy”, which is only two walking minutes away from our office. We were absolutely excited by this great idea and started to make a plan:
First of all, we went to the orphanage and talked to the founder Margaret Ngcangca, who was elected as Grahamstown Citizen of the year several times. She told us that she didn’t want to have a family when she was younger, but was willing to contribute to a positive development of her local community. That’s when she decided that she wants to create a place where the little children in her township who don’t have a proper family can find a home: The Home of Joy. Since the number of orphans is constantly growing they have difficulties feeding the children on a regular basis.
And this is where we, as the VSA and awarenet learners, decided to improve the situation through our work.To realize this, we needed a good network. And actually, we found some great sponsoring partners in the “Run/Walk for Life”-Team Grahamstown, Vetvital and our local Pick n Pay market, who helped us to pay for the whole day. We even got so much funding that we could not only buy the ingredients we needed in order to cook, but we could also buy bags of rice and maize meal to guarantee a longer lasting impact of our work.
Obviously, the preparation of the day was a lot of work, but it was worth it:
When we started to cook together with the learners, we were amazed by the engagement and the passion the SDA learners showed. All of them contributed their own little bit of good to our campaign.
At the orphanage we were welcomed by a happy crowd of little children. It was heartwarming to watch our learners handing out their handmade food to the kids of the orphanage. The SDA students were all emotionally touched by the experience of interacting with children who are only a few years younger but have to struggle with really hard problems like malnutrition and mental disabilities.
And this is what Peace is all about. To become aware of all the smaller and bigger problems in your local area and then do something about it. Our team and the learners are keen to continue our cooperation with the orphanage and set up an online campaign. What a great result of an impressive day… 😀