Fighting Gangs Recruiting Children in Africa

Introduction 

In South Africa we are working in one of the most dangerous gang lead townships. Many parents are unemployed, leaving an increase in gang recruitment across all ages. Since COVID School has dropped to part time leaving the children on the streets for longer. IGNITE is a community lead project that provides a support network for children in the community. Currently 127 children attend and get a free meal, often the only food they get, support with homework and play games/sport with our team.

Report 

We have been running the feeding program for 120 children with the money raised so far however we have not run out of funds and so had to stop the program from end of January this year and are desperately trying to raise enough funds to restart this program. A donation of $10 will feed 5 children for a day. A few of the locals in the community do not have much themselves but value their community and the children and have taken it upon themselves to start an after school club, this project is woking with them to build a sustainable project that provides a meal, mental health, sports, homework support and other key engaging activities to keep children busy and part of something other than a gang.

Thank you for your support

Dear Supporters,

We thank you for your support and as we end November we look back and are happy to update you that we managed to provide at least a sandwich to all 127 children at least 5 days a week for the whole month! This was totally funded by generous donations from people like you and many food gifts donated by other communities near us! We really hope that we fundraise enough to be able to do the same in December and maybe even purchase some footballs and other sports equipment?

Sadly this is a special announcement that we hoped not to have to make. Earlier this week our Community Manager, who started IGNITE, Nita sadly lost her sister. Nita doesn't take a penny of your donations for herself and has many side cleaning and childminding jobs to keep herself funded. She then uses the rest of her time to cook for free for all these children and run the IGNITE program - she is a true unsung hero to us! 

Sister Marian sadly passed and Nita is struggling to fund her funeral with such small income and no savings and therefore as a special appeal we hope that the few people that already donated to this project will help us raise $1,250 to fund the funeral, catering, transport and a small memorial. It's such a tough time for Nita and our team are doing everything we can and we hope you can help us take some of the financial pressure off of her too. 

I really do thank you for taking the time to donate to this project recently and we know this request is outside the scope of our project but if you are able to help we would really appreciate it and we know Nita and her family will too! We will only take donations over the next 2-3 days as a support for Nita and the family and after that we will return all future donations back to this amazing project. 

Thank you ,

Tyrone

Chief Executive