Description of Makhundu Christian Support

M.C.S.
MAKHUNDU CHRISTIAN SUPPORT

Lowveld Sugars 603JU Makhundu Tonga Rd Hectorspruit Dist 1330
P/Bag X510
Malelane
1320
Republic of South Africa

inkrollo@mweb.co.za
Tel 013 792 4516
Cell: 084 853 3471
Fax 013 792 4721


Makhundu Christian Support is attempting to feed orphans in 8 of the villages in the Nkomazi area of the Lowveld Mpumalanga South Africa. The Makhundu Christian Support Executive consists of me, that is, Rollo Granville, the Treasurer/ Project Officer and distributor of food, my wife Inky the Secretary/ Bookkeeper and organizer of the pilot health clinics in the villages. The Board consists of Mr Blessings Phiri, Chairman and Labour Relations Officer on our farm, Mr Mkeseni Xulu, High School teacher and family friend, Father Jean Pierre Le Scour the local parish priest who has been of tremendous help, supplying contacts and the where-with-all to get all this organized. We are all volunteers. We are registered as a non profit organization and have applied for and received tax exemption. Our books are audited yearly by Mr Bill Stacey in White River and are open for viewing by anyone who is interested. We submit 6 monthly progress reports to Breadline Africa and Social Services.

We employ Mr Jabulani Mathabela and Ms Zanele Mabuza as our Liaison Officers, who check on the orphans, the caregivers and the schools involved. They visit the orphans in their homes and call on the school principals to check on attendance and progress. We strongly recommend that the children we feed go to school if old enough. They hold regular meetings with all these afore-mentioned groups and write detailed reports, which are then handed in to me to read and act upon if, need be. Mr Mathabela, Miss Mabuza and I meet every Saturday morning when the food is handed out to the children, bypassing the careworkers if possible. Files and computer records are kept by my wife Inky on each care worker, how much mealie meal is issued to each group, the number of orphans etc and reliable database of orphans is being developed by Mr Mathebela.

With the Aids epidemic being so rife here, the number of orphans is increasing at an alarming rate. We are feeding approximately 2000 orphans. The villages are Phiva, Mdladla, Kamlhushwa, Langeloop, Driekoppies, Bongani, Middelplaas, and Schulzendal. Each village is visited and fed every fortnight. We issue 760 X 12.5kg bags of mealie meal per month i.e. 9500 kg and 6 tons of vegetables a month from our farm. We provide 1 meal a day per person. It works out to 6kg maize meal and about 4kg vegetables and fruit (tomatoes beans and papaya) per child per month. We also receive the odd donation from Boxer Stores of out of date dry foodstuffs. . We also supply the children with 380 kg dry beans and 380 kg soya soup powder – approximately 500gm per 4 children per month. Sometimes we are lucky enough to receive donations in the form of food (e.g. cream, cheese and yoghurt from Woolworths), blankets and old clothes from various sources such as churches and friends.

Our outreach started as volunteer help, distributing food under Thembalethu, a home-based care organization in our area. Thembalethu, due to lack of funds stopped feeding and rather branched out into teaching life skills, holiday camps etc for which they have been funded. They had however established a network of care workers and caregivers of which we now make limited use. We are involved with 135 care workers trained by Social Services and Thembalethu. Each care worker heads a group of caregivers and is responsible for approximately 30 children each. The caregivers look after a “family” of up to 8 children each – brothers, sisters, joined by orphaned cousins and siblings from other relationships in which their parents were involved.

There are a growing number of orphans we are unable to address. The children we are feeding at the moment have no possibility of obtaining a grant due to lack of ID documents, parents’ death certificates etc. Many families are orphan-headed with the oldest sibling acting as family head at 13 or 14 years old. Many have nursed and then buried their parents, often in their back yard because of no funds to do otherwise and therefore have no official death certificates. Our outreach is important because without us they would have no food. There are thousands – yes –thousands more waiting in the sidelines for assistance. Our biggest constraint is money. At the moment we are bring supported by an overseas donor from Ireland, Breadline Africa in Cape Town, and various kind friends and donors. We get no aid or support from anyone official except a hopeful request from the Dept of Social Services for a quote from us for office equipment for the little centre we are trying to set up in one of the villages, but we have heard nothing yet. We have approached the Government, the Lotto, and the Mpumalanga Government but have had no response at all. We get support from Child Welfare in the form of courses and workshops which our Liaison Officers attend.

Our goal is to alleviate the hopelessness we see and to integrate the orphans socially by coordinating and checking with the schools as to their well being as well as being a source of continuous food. To date we have been doing just that. We have consistently fed and co-coordinated with the children and their care workers. They seem much happier and are concentrating and doing better at school due to our involvement. The children have improved immensely since April/May 2004 when we started supplying food to them regularly. They seem to be well physically and psychologically – on the whole a vast improvement on how they appeared when we first started unofficially in July 2001 – thin, silent, destitute and without hope, joy or enthusiasm for life. The care workers have sometimes been able to obtain grants for some of the children. Then they are no longer fed by us and their place is filled by another grateful orphan.

With the help of Breadline Africa we have started a scheme whereby orphan-headed families are “adopted” by a donor family from overseas who see to their needs in the line of food, blankets, school uniforms etc. Provisions are bought for them every month by my wife Inky, and Zanele Mabuza supervises the families in the role of big sister/mother. We hope to interest local donors in this scheme and eventually develop a type of informal “soup kitchen” for these families where the pooled food is cooked for the children by Zanele’s mother, alleviating them of that chore, avoiding waste and ensuring that the children eat properly.

We hope and pray that the orphans will survive and grow up to be good and solid citizens of this country. We also hope and pray that they will become socially integrated and a healthy part of the social structure of our nation. This feeding scheme has put hope in the hearts of these neglected and abandoned children, alleviating the temptation of crime and prostitution as a way of surviving. Hopefully we are proof to them that people out there care for them and are willing to help and monitor their development into useful citizens rather than street children and potential criminals.

We also like to think that we are a sign of the type of honest caring that is so badly needed in this world of the rich and the poor, the privileged and the not privileged . Except for the salaries of our employees and certain small admin costs e.g. transport and distribution of food, every penny that is donated is used for the children. We are aware that our scheme has conscientized all those who come into contact with us and has activated a lot of good people to support and help us and we thank you all for your trust and concern.

I am a concerned farmer in this area and a deeply concerned Christian and citizen of this country. I consider myself to be a member of this community and am only too aware of the threat of the Aids epidemic and its social and economic impact on all of us.

Rollo Granville
LOWVELD SUGARS