Our Chair Mmapula Tladi Small flew to South Africa in early February and will be visiting Thuto Lesedi School in Vosloorus, nr Johannesburg where our sponsors very kindly pay annual school fees for Aids orphans. She will meet the sponsored students and find out about their general well being and how they are doing at the school. The headteacher will also introduce her to the new tranche of students we hope to find sponsors for next year. Mmapula will also be able to see how the feeding programme is progressing and how things are in general at the school so that we can review our donation strategy for next year.
We are hoping that Mmapula will be able to bring back letters from the sponsored children, their school reports for last year and a recent photograph – and we will send these to sponsors as soon as we have them.
As a trustee of our sister Charity ” Community H.E.A.R.T.” she will also be undetaking an on the ground review of their “Book and 10pence” campaign. Community H.E.A.R.T. collect books from a variety of souces and ship them to South Africa with the aim of setting up a library in every school. Waltham Forest Thuso in South Africa has been helping to collect books for this campaign since its inception. To date 2.4 million books have been shipped (thanks to the Co-operative Society Ltd.). There are over 250,000 schools in South Africa and there is still a long way to go. Mmapula is tasked to assess the impact of this book scheme on the schools that she will visit during her trip.
