Fris voor de dag!

Projectgegevens

Projectnaam: Fris voor de dag!
Aanmaakdatum: 5-12-2019
Projectstatus: Afgerond
Aanvraag: Aankoop van 4 wasmachines, 20 stapelbedden + matrassen & 4 televisies.
Begroting: € 7.073,00
Instelling: Botshabelo
Land: Zuid-Afrika
Locatie:

Benodigde producten

Alle kleding, zomer en winter. Spellgoed. Educatief materiaal.

Omschrijving

Botshabelo Community is een gemeenschap die is opgericht in 1990 door Marion en Con Cloete, twee hoogopgeleide blanke zuid-afrikanen die hun welvarend leventje hebben opgegeven om hun visie op een nieuwe toekomst voor Zuid-Afrika waar te kunnen maken. Het terrein waar ze de community hebben gesticht ligt in een mooie omgeving buiten Johannesburg waar er grote armoede is onder de lokale bevolking vanwege de sluiting van de mijnen. Botshabelo heeft als doel om het leven van deze mensen te verbeteren en zorgt er voor dat de 300 kinderen die bij in het dorp op hun grond wonen onderdak, scholing en elke dag een voedzame maaltijd voorgeschoteld krijgen, ze voorzien ze vooral van een familiale structuur en veel liefde. Volgens hen is dit de basis van een toekomst zonder criminaliteit. Dit bewonderenswaardig initiatief heeft hen al veel erkenning opgeleverd, maar alles financieel doen draaien is niet altijd eenvoudig. Wings of Support komt hen tegemoet door 20 nieuwe bedden,vier televisietoestellen en vier wasmachines aan te kopen. Stuk voor stuk voorwerpen die het dagelijkse leven van de kinderen wat aangenamer maakt. Update: Een glimp van het leven bij Botshabelo Poverty wars against children and youth -alcohol becomes the tipping pointI discovered how personally alcoholics take their drinking holes, when the youth and managers broke down an illegal tavern on the village. Pre-viously, under age children had been found at the tavern sitting with truck drivers, [they stop on their way to Botswana], they were high and drunk for 12 hours at a stretch. Subsequently, Collen, Choni and I [Marion], were arrested and jailed. Thabo, the illegal tavern owner opened a case against us, the charge, ‘malicious damage to property’. He told the police that it was his private home and it was destroyed, which was untrue since he lives with his girlfriend three blocks down. The alcoholic mothers in the village went on strike with him and said that BCDT is unfair and the youth managers too strict. Ironi-cally, BCDT had assisted many of these mothers with their children since infancy, providing food, education, clothing and protection. At times like this the larger debate is highlighted for BCDT and its management: ‘are you assisting people for their gratitude or for the well-being of the country’s future generations?’Many of the children of the alcoholics ran and hid in the recreation room, refusing to partici-pate. But to cut a long story short. Collen, Choni and I were jailed. Jail is always a humbling ex-perience and a great equalizer, even though it was for one day. One meets really interesting people; people who either need a fix, a cigarette, a drink or a lawyer. There is a strange camara-derie amongst people in jail. Having broken societies laws, they find themselves in a foreign world of police, cells, lawyers, prosecutors and magistrates. All our jewellery, belts, shoelaces and watches were confiscated. Choni and I were put in a cell that looked like it had not been cleaned in a decade, it smelt of urine, dirty shoes, body odour and desperation. Collen had it worse because he was squashed into a cell with many other inmates, and rats the size of cats. I went to the toilet, no doors, while a male police officer -watched me; fortunately, I have lived in a village for 30 years! Anyway, I had a much bigger problem -performing a delicate balancing act, my jeans around my ankles while preventing my bottom from touching the most hazardous toilet seat I had ever seen. It had enough specimens on it to train an entire class of medical students!After several weeks our case was moved to a regional court, where the prosecutor threw out the case. The tavern has remained shut. The takeaway is that, despite our fears, sometimes it is necessary to go all the way. “In for a penny, in for a pound”, as it were. The youth and children have another perspective on what parents or caretakers must do to protect them. Many thanks to the many individuals who sent money to ensure our victory. We were particularly touched by the youth and individuals in the vil-lage, who, despite their own poverty, lent us small amounts of money to see us through.The fallout from living in a home with alcoholics is well documented and remains an area of aca-demic research. But academic studies are dis-tant, theoretical and statistical; an entirely differ-ent reality emerges when one personally wit-nesses the health, educational, emotional, and relationship devastation. Young men, imitating patterns learned from their own fathers, and still filled with rage, beat up their pregnant girlfriends. Mothers buy alcohol, rather than mealie meal for their family; unsupervised children roam the vil-lage until 3 a.m. while parents party drunkenly; children drain the last drops of alcohol from dis-carded bottles. All of this sets up future patterns of behaviour, as the youth learn to use alcohol to ease their stress, just as their parents did.Alcohol abuse is also strongly linked to new sta-tistics showing a toll of seven women and three children murdered in SA every day, on average. For 2020, child murder dropped by 7%, yet even during this comparatively ‘good’ year, 943 chil-dren were still murdered and 24,000 were sex-ually abused.The fight against alcohol continues amidst a grim post-covid-19 backdrop. A recent report states fully 50% of South Africans live in dire poverty, a third of whom are unemployed. The country faces a logjam of rampant crime, serious corrup-tion and theft of public money, an energy crisis and a deficit of skilled labour. But rather than despairing, this is a time where all citizens must become accountable, and each must do their small part.So despite angry tavern owners, sore little boys, and parents with severe substance abuse, BCDT must, and shall, continue on with our mis-sion, with the generous help of people like you. Every dollar, rand or physical item is hugely ap-preciated.“because alcohol is encouraged by our culture, we get the idea that it is not dangerous. However, alcohol is the most potent and most toxic of the legal psychoactive drugs...... ”Beverly A Potter and Sebastian Orgali