Gender Equality South Africa Project #38463

Empowering Girls and Women as Mothers

by Keep The Dream196

Project Report | Dec 6, 2023
Thank YOU! You are so APPRECIATED!

By Louise and the Dream Team | Director

THANK YOU!

As we come to the end of our working year, I just want to say THANK YOU so much for your support over the year! You are essential to our work, without you, the fun stuff would not happen! Without you, we would not be able to run our programs, we would not be able maintain the impact we have achieved. We just would cease to exist, without you!

Through your support we have had a zero teenage pregnancy rate this year, making it 5yrs in a row with zero girls becoming pregnant, because of the values and morals built into the program. NO children have been involved negatively with the police or involved in drugs or alcohol usage.

We do not yet know our matric pass rate for this year however we do know over the last 15yrs our rate is 91% where governments pass rate is 64%.

We have impacted over 1,500 children on a weekly basis through this project alone!

We have celebrated 5 Woodbadge Awards, 4 Commissioner Awards, 2 Leaping Wolves, 2 Springboks, and 1 Silver Protea (a bit like that Christmas Carol – 5 gold rings, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree!).

We have continued growing the Children’s Program and reaching more families and more communities with the project.

The SHG program will be celebrating their successes on Friday with a special day set aside for all representatives to come and share the advances they have made in their groups and communities. The team have been mobilizing to start many more groups in the new year, however currently we have:

52 Groups
893 women and families represented
2,365 children supported

None of this would have been possible without your support! The funding we have been able to raise has not been enough to cover all the expenses. You have enabled us to continue to function and change lives. You are essential to us! I just want you to know that!

We are grateful to you! I am grateful for you! We have a strong foundation because of you! Our program continues to grow and develop, we continue to change lives.

I have appreciated the emails, the notes, the acknowledgement, the encouragement I have received throughout the year from you it is very special! The smiles on the kid’s faces have been a wonderful reward and as I share those photos with you please take heart, we are making a difference together.

Bless you

Louise

The excitement! Look at the chap at the back jump!

The Smiles are REAL!

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Dec 6, 2023
Colour Run Dec 2023!

By Louise and the Dream Team | Colour Co-ordinator

Explosion of Colours!

We are coming to the end of wonderful and impactful year! It has been full of highs and lows.

Lows because try as we might, we come up against intractable belief systems that prevent us from bringing change where it is most needed, in families. We come up against witchcraft repeatedly and unfortunately it is not limited, it is pervasive. We have had people actively curse us, primarily because of jealousy which is the root. Jealousy because the kids we serve are progressing well, the ladies we work with are getting ahead of their peers!

In this country, the prevailing belief is that everyone is born with 100% good luck. If I get ahead of you for example, I study hard, work hard, get a husband, a house, a car etc I am stealing your good luck! That justifies you going to the witchdoctor and putting a curse on me. It does not acknowledge that I worked hard, studied hard, made sacrifices and put sound business plans in place to achieve my goals of a car and house, it just means that I have stolen from you! Sadly, this is all too common. It pulls people down and pulls people back, curses in this country have substance!

It enables people to blame others and not take responsibility for their own life outcomes.

One of the highs that we had last weekend was the colour run. We had over 120 kids attend, we trained them in Child Participation, they did their colour thing and then walked through the Burgersdorp area singing Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika! The national anthem of South Africa, also sharing about Child Participation, then we had an impromptu dance off, all of which was captured on video with the links below. It was a wonderful day of celebration, made possible through your support.

I hope you enjoy the photos and videos, you are welcome to leave a message!

Thank you for your support and generosity. You really do make a difference!

Blessings

Louise

The Results

Lindani whom you have met before!

Love the Smiles!

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Dec 1, 2023
Ronny, 20yrs later!

By Louise and the Dream Team | Honorary Grandmother

Ronny and family with Makungu Springbok recipient

As I shared earlier, last Sunday was our 20yr celebration of the start of Keep The Dream196, before KTD196 was created we started our flagship program with the kids, Scouts! It was different to Scouts in South Africa because we didn’t have the resources, or the capacities for our kids to advance through the program. So we advocated and eventually changed the program nationally. Now our kids are being awarded the top national awards. If you missed that blog, please go to the earlier one to see the celebration.

Anyway, today I want to share about a young man who when he turned 18yrs of age, sent me this letter!

Before I joined the Scouts I was somehow like a terrible young man. I was the kind of person who like swearing at other people. I was a person who liked going out to the streets with my friends during the night and we’d mock everyone who passed by and laugh at them regardless of their gender or age. Lying was always on the tip of my tongue.

If I did anything wrong at home and my parents would try to rectify my mistakes I would get angry with everyone and go away and come back when they are sleeping (I was very short tempered and not very friendly to other people). I and my friends had taken to beating other children as a very fashionable style and we would beat them up for no good reason.

The worst thing about me is I was a great gambling animal. I would steal any of my parent’s cents and rob out their change when they would send me to the store or shops, I would gamble with the money. I would play dice with older people. The older people who were my friends would force me to drink alcohol and have many girl-friends, so I did because I wanted to be with them because they gave me money to gamble with if I didn’t have any.

So Scouts has changed my life completely as I am away from these hectic things I was doing in the past. I’m no longer fooling around with my old friends; Scouts has made me have good friends. I am glad I’m away from those bad things because the only thing that was left was for me was to start smoking and start dying from AID’s as I was already drinking. — Ronny 18yrs — 1st Khopo and now a Chairman of Marula Rover Crew

Ronny is now 33yrs of age, a husband to one of our original 13 girls Nkateko, and the proud father of a lovely little girl. He is a IT specialist and is currently working in Eastern Cape connecting Fibre to people’s homes and ensuring internet connection in remote areas. His wife Nkateko is an Occupational Therapist and an entrepreneur who has her own health services business. In the picture below, you will see Ronny with Nkateko on his left, then Makungu who received her Springbok Award, she is also the niece to Nkateko.

He is a wonderful father, a faithful and dedicated husband despite his rough beginnings. It was a strategic decision to work with boys and girls in the beginning because we wanted to teach both boys and girls to work together and respect each other, to see each other as amazing human beings to be encouraged and supported not to be taken advantage of and abused. Ronny, despite his formative years, was able to change, and become the husband and partner to Nkateko who supports and promotes her in her adventures. He also is so caring and supportive of his daughter (and very protective), he is not the usual young man and I am so proud of who he has become. (ps I am also the unofficial grandmother!)

We started Scouts with 13 Mabuza family, cousins and friends. Now, through such humble beginnings we have seen in excess of 30,000children over the 20yrs of service to this and many other communities. Eleven of those years with GlobalGiving, with your support! You have made this legacy happen. We started with changing children, then families and now we are seeing communities starting to change.

You have been instrumental in this change. You gift of support, your prayers, your encouragement has held us up, and kept us focussed. Thank you is just so pitiable, it does not convey the depth of feelings and gratefulness I have for your support to realise our dreams of building tomorrow today! Your support has been essential, fundamental and quite frankly vital to the work we have done, are doing and will continue to do!

Thank you so much

Blessings

Louise

Ronny as a young Scout Leader 2008

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