News from our projects and our organisation’s work

June 2024: Today we would like to update you about our projects in South Africa and the organisation’s work in the spring.

Following the conclusion of the South African financial year at the end of February, we habe prepared the latest annual reports with information from the project managers. These provide a nice review of the work and successes in the projects in 2023. It is particularly pleasing that the number of HIV-positive children in the children's home is steadily decreasing. You can find the reports with photos under the respective projects on our homepage.

In February, we informed you that our organisation had once again applied for the Netto fundraising campaign “Get involved for your organisation”. Unfortunately, this time there were not enough votes for us to take part again. Too bad, but we are fair “losers” and wish the selected organisations every success.

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To say goodbye to the pre-school children in our village project, the children received a great surprise in February: their own gym bag filled with a colouring book, pencils, sweets, toothbrush, toothpaste, towel and soap. As always, the farewell parties were loud, colourful and cheerful.

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At the beginning of each new school year, we pay for the school uniforms for particularly poor families in the township who would otherwise not be able to attend school due to the uniform requirement. At the beginning of March, we were able to make 12 primary school pupils happy.

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On April 26, the nimble runners from Moritz School Erfurt once again completed their laps for a good cause. The Moritz School has been supporting our projects for 11 years with its charity run under the motto “by children for children”. You can find more impressions of this year's charity run on the Moritz School website (German only).

We are incredibly grateful for the fantastic donation sum of 4’280.27 EUR, which we will use to do something good for the children in all four projects.

Together with the project managers on site, we have already collected some ideas:

• In the children's home, we support repairs to playgrounds and trampolines

• In the township project, we want to provide water barrels for needy families so that they have water for their vegetable gardens and households, especially in the dry season

• In the preschools of the village project, we would like to plant trees, expand the vegetable gardens and install new sanitary facilities in one preschool

• In the feeding project, we would like to finance small bags with school materials and sweets for the children for Nelson Mandela Day in July

Thanks to the loyal support of the Moritz School, we are able to realise such projects in addition to the regular costs for food and hygiene articles. There may even be enough funds for balls or learning materials for the children in all four projects. Simply great - Siyabonga - THANK YOU.

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On May 11, we unfortunately received sad news from South Africa.

Karel De Nysschen, the former project manager of the village project, passed away at the age of 83 after a short and serious illness.

For 14 years (from the founding of Siyabonga in 2007 until 2021) Karel had coordinated the home visits in the village project and actively helped to set up the preschools. We are incredibly grateful that we were able to get to know Karel with his charismatic, warm-hearted nature and to work with him for so many years. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family.

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While summer is slowly arriving in Germany, winter is just around the corner in South Africa. In the coming months, we would therefore like to collect donations for winter clothing for the children in our projects. If anyone would like to start a fundraising campaign and needs information material, please get in touch.

We hope you enjoy many sunny days soon.