usindiso new beginnings project

Description

Usindiso Ministries provides shelter for abused and homeless women, their children and teenage girls. All of their residents are provided with their basic needs, counselling and social services. The organisation accommodates up to 85 women and 20 teenage girls. All of the organisation’s children attend school, whether nursery or formal school. There is also a day care for the babies, with the mothers taking turns to look after them. This gives the other mothers a chance to attend training, volunteer in the shelter or look for work. Little Fish is the name of the organisation’s Nursery School, which has the children aged between 2 and 6 years attending daily. The children have three meals a day and are taught using the Montessori method.

The organisation wanted to extend their shelter to include the 2nd floor, the rooms of which needed to be painted. There were about 20 rooms in need of painting. 

The AVI team

Kameel Keshav – Entyce Beverages
Deepa Sita – Entyce Beverages
Andre Klingenberg – Entyce Beverages
Jeanne Lamprecht – Entyce Beverages
Kaydon Meyer – Entyce Beverages
Gary Van Der Linden – Entyce Beverages
Allyson Cairns – Entyce Beverages
Portia Tlhomelang – Entyce Beverages
Halian Stripp – Entyce Beverages
Thuthu Mbekeni – Entyce Beverages
Kameel Keshav – Entyce Beverages

Feedback from the project

We are preparing our 2nd floor to be able to extend our shelter as the need out there is continually growing. The need was to paint the rooms on the floor of which there are 31 – the volunteers managed to complete 11 rooms, which is a huge accomplishment as the rooms are fairly large and they arrived late, having got a little lost.

The team of volunteers were friendly and interested in what we do at Usindiso, some were a little overcome, as for some people the reality of the poor and needy touches one’s heart. They then got down to work and accomplished a great deal in the time allocated.

I would like to say a really BIG thank you to everyone in the team of volunteers, for coming downtown to make a difference. Even though our residents were not directly involved in the task on Monday, it means a lot to them that there are people who want to do something to help. 

The task of painting the rooms also helps us to get closer to our goal of being able to open the floor to take in more women and children in need. Thank you again.