New Years greetings 2020

January 2020: an eventful and intensive year 2019 lies behind us and in the first newsletter this year we want to revisit the main events again and share some photos with you. The year 2019 began very excitingly: on 8 January our chair persons became parents of little Jakob.

Our board member Conny Mirswa visited the projects in South Africa together with the film producer Robert Schröder in February 2019.

During three weeks they had a tight schedule and have gathered film material and interviews with the project staff and needy people - in total they recorded over 40 hours of material.

This is the basis for professional films of all supported projects which Robert creates now. The Siyabonga Board already got a sneak preview and we are convinced that the films will be great. So you can be excited about the release in 2020. Conny also recorded her experiences in her blog, together with great pictures: https://conny-going-places.jimdofree.com (German only).

In April 2019 we had our bi-annual general meeting with a fascinating photo presentation by Conny. At this meeting we also bid farewell to our long-standing and engaged Board members Henryka and Hans-Joachim Schmidt, both had been involved in Siyabonga as treasurer and secretary since the organization’s founding. They had supported our organisation for the past 12 years and now handed over their tasks as treasurer to Annemarie Krummrich and as secretary to Conny Mirswa.

We would like to thank Mrs. and Mr. Schmidt for their time, care and dedication and also thank the new Board members for their motivation and willingness to take over the honorary positions. Siyabonga kakulo!

In October the highlight of the year 2019 took place: the Children's Home Greytown celebrated it's 100th birthday. Our treasurer Annemarie and her partner Sandor joined the party, a full weekend of dancing, singing, laughter and lots of gratefulness.

They both also helped in the other projects. In the village project they handed over new teaching material and toys to the pre-schools. In the feeding project they helped preparing the meals and planting vegetables in the garden behind the kitchen, which was started in 2018. The feeding project also has it's own borehole now, which was build with our donations. In the township project Annemarie and Sandor were in time to replace the radiator of the tractor, which is used for plowing the fields of rosemary and rose geranium and the planting season was about to begin. In both, the township as well as the village project, they visited the local families - who often suffer from HIV - and provided them with staple food, hygienic articles and eye glasses / shades from Germany.

We have reported about their experiences in our December newsletters.

Another highlight of 2019 took place in November:

Our homepage was relaunched and now shines in new splendour.

Our secretary Conny has invested a lot of time, creativity and work and the result is fantastic. You can also register for our newsletter on our website.

The Board of Siyabonga wishes you and your families a wonderful, healthy and happy New Year 2020.