Transform 22 Children's Lives in Johannesburg

The name of this project is “Transform 22 Children’s Lives” but the Covid events of 2020 were not quite the transformation we were expecting.

South Africa seems to be well past the peak of the pandemic and although the country didn’t survive unscathed, we seem to have experienced a lot less deaths than what were being projected, and most importantly we have managed to keep our Thandanani family free of the virus. This has not been without its challenges but I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Thandanani house parents who have stuck to the task, sometimes at the expense of not taking their off-days (when they were entitled to), so that they wouldn’t be going back into a foreign environment where they may have picked up an infection and brought it back to the home.

The children are now all back at school but it’s definitely a whole new experience for them with stringent measures in place to prevent the spread of the virus, for example some schools are only meeting on alternate days so that they can achieve the correct social distancing in the classroom, and they are obliged to wear masks all the time while at school.

But having said we’re making good progress we nevertheless need to continue to exercise vigilance, and being vigilant means in some instances extra cost for us, for example, children that would normally have gone to school in a mini-taxi (16-seater microbus) no longer do so because of the risk of the virus in that environment, and in place of that we have decided to take them to school and back ourselves, with some schools being up to 20 kms away and the resultant cost of fuel and wear-and-tear on our vehicles.

But we’re not complaining, and we’re extremely grateful that we’re surviving the pandemic, and we owe a debt of gratitude to you our supporters, and thank you once again for every donation whether big or small that has been helping us to survive the Covid-19 challenge.

Best wishes

Paul

Links:

• Thandanani House of Refuge