By Jessica Gordon | Project Contributor
The sweethearts Foundation Project Update
Background
The sweethearts Foundation aims to help underprivileged people receive the gift of movement by recycling plastic Tops and Tags which are sold, and the proceeds used to fund wheelchairs. It takes approximately 450 kg of bottle Tops or 50 kg bread Tags to fund a standard wheelchair. Against incredible odds, we managed to collect enough plastic to hand over our first wheelchair on Valentine's Day 2013.
Our beneficiaries come from the most marginalized communities in South Africa and something as simple as a wheelchair is often out of their reach due to financial issues and long government backlogs.
The foundation is driven completely by volunteers, who we endearingly call “sweethearts”. They are the ones who make the magic happen and help change the lives of our beneficiaries, as well as their families. It is thanks to our enthusiastic, energetic and absolutely awesome sweethearts, like you, who continue to help us, support us and motivate us to give all that we can to those who need our help.
12 Days of Christmas Campaign
Wheelchairs do not have a one-size-fits-all solution and providing the “wrong” type of wheelchair can do more damage in the long run. We made the important decision to ensure that every beneficiary should receive a wheelchair that is suited to their specific needs. Unfortunately though, these specialized wheelchairs often come with a big price tag and the plastic recycling funding does not cover all the costs – as a result we’ve created 12 Days of Christmas which aims to help 12 beneficiaries with extra special needs.
Our 12 Days of Christmas: Wheelchair Edition campaign was started in 2016 and in 2020 it really blossomed! We were completely overwhelmed with support and received donations from all around the world.
Whilst we always aimed to select 12 beneficiaries for this project; in the past we were not successful; however, this year we were able to pre-select 12 beneficiaries for this project!
Considering the pandemic, we found ourselves in 2020 32% of donations made towards our annual fundraiser were made on Giving Tuesday and match funding from GlobalGiving helped raise another 10% of our funds! We raised a grand total of R97 881.66 which was distributed between 12 beneficiaries.
Thanks to the generosity of everyone who contributed to the fundraiser, we were able to fully fund Amahle, Gontse, Boitumelo, Siyabonga, Reathabile, Banele, Lisa, Sindile and Boikaelelo wheelchairs and partially fund Nambitha, Caleb and Tiishetso’s wheelchairs. Over the course of 2021 we continued fundraising the remaining funds and together with Tops and Tags revenue we hope to fund the remaining wheelchairs.
These wheelchairs would not have been possible without each and every sweetheart, who have given in such a generous way – thank you sweethearts!
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