Educate Special Needs Children in South Africa

During the past 3 months we have had some amazing things happen.  We launched the Sponsor a learner project, connected with international friends who would like to help and we received an amazing donation to help with the school's cash flow.  Although the donation was higher than expected, this does not bring us out of our area of concern and we remain in the red due to the fact that new learners keep on enrolling.  This is good for the school, but these learners can't afford to pay school fees and this puts more pressure on the school. The received equipment and much needed wheelchairs and walkers.  For interesting facts I have listed all the exciting things that happened in the last 3 months.

• We also received wheelchairs and other equipment to help develop the muscle tone of our Cerebral Palsy learners.  This equipment was donated to us by The Paige Project.
• Murray & Roberts Child Welfare donated R30 000 toward our agricultural project for a tunnel.
• We launched the Sponsor a learner programme.
• Thaba Tholo game auction took place and when things were finalized, they donated much needed cash to cover some of the running costs of the school. 
• The game industry got more involved and they are recommending that international visitors and clients visit the school and see first hand the good work that we do.
• We eventually got registered with the Department of Social Development.  Although this has taken place, we will have to now apply for funding and we don't know if we will get it.  It is however a step in the right direction.
• The learners will have their Christmas party on 23 November 2016 which has been sponsored by a kind hearted business in Thabazimbi.  This is an annual event that they take care of and every child gets spoilt rotten.
• The community has gotten more involved and the High School in Thabazimbi sent some of their students to visit the school and spend the day to help out.
• Dr. Lanette Hattingh from Brainwave Academy in South Africa sponsored 5 laptops all pre-loaded with special needs education systems for our more advance learners.
• We held our AGM on 17 November whereby the community thanked us for what we do.
• Shonaquip South Africa (Ruth) is getting more involved and we are looking at using the school to train other centres' staff as from 2017 to raise funds for the school.
• We held a fundraiser in Pretoria for the school with PHASA and Hunter's Care.
• We were invited to a function hosted by The Paige Project in Rivonia Gauteng and they have committed to assist us to build a therapy centre and equip it for the school.
• The staff continuously did smaller fundraisers and awareness campaigns for the school.

These were all very exciting thing that happened and we are more positive that next year we could do better than this very difficult year.

We would like to thank everybody for the special way you treat us.  We are looking forward to reaching our ultimate goal and complete construction and renovations of our facilities to give our learners all the opportunities they deserve.  We are a long way from that but we are hopeful that we will get it done.

God bless you all.

Links:

• Spitskop Special Needs School's website
• School's Facebook page to stay up to date
• Facebook Sponsor a learner information