Sunday, March 4, 2012
SA and Aus unite to make a difference
Last Saturday, Micah6 was connected to a small group of music lovers in Sydney Australia. While having a good ole' blast (literally as a couple of saxophones blew into the night) in Aus, another a group of South Africans were painting classrooms at Sparks Estate Secondary School as part of a Micah6 school clean-up day. As a result of these two efforts...
- Sparks Estate has 12 fresh painted classrooms and a school library and
- The future of another vulnerable girl is secured by a generous "party" donation from Australia.
Thank you to those Sydney residents who attended the Mowday summer night concert and donated to Micah6. At this present moment, one of our girls in the our Micah6 programme is really struggling to keep pace in a main stream public school. She has a learning disability and unless we intervene she will literally be 'stuck' in the South African schooling system without any remedial support. For a young girl like this, who is orphaned and lives in extremely vulnerable circumstances with her unemployed grandmother (and a multitude of other siblings and cousins), there is little hope for a reasonable life trajectory. In a class of over 40 children, where there is no time for one-on-one support (let alone hope of seeing an occupational therapist), she will continually be reminded of how she is a 'failure'. Each year that she is unable to progress to the next grade, no teacher will address the cause of her problem or explain to her why she is 'different'. Her confidence is increasingly lowered in the process and any sense of purpose or ability to rise above her circumstances is snuffed out.
Recently we took this young girl to be assessed at a school that caters for children with her needs. She is currently on the waiting list to enter this school and while she is waiting we have been in a quandary trying to figure out how to get funding towards her fees of R6,000 a year. Your generous night of reveling has made her forthcoming placement at the school possible. Many thanks!
To Grace Family Church thank you for engaging with school reality in South Africa. In particular, thank you for giving up a beautiful Saturday morning, and without complaining, scrapping bubble gum off classroom walls before they could be painted! This was truly a labour of love. A special thanks to Dave Richter for organising the details of the day and important logistics as well as Bev Andrews for taking the responsibility of ensuring the curtains for the library were made.
The 25 February will certainly go down as the first day Micah6 has engaged so much support, from so many people (across continents) at one moment in time. The Lord has been faithful.
