Just a little update from us about Covid-19

As many of you know that we give a gift on your behalf to The Sozo Foundation to help fund the brilliant work that they are doing there for the students. As the coronavirus epidemic sprung up, we wanted to make sure our money was going to the right people who needed it most. We can tell you that The Sozo Foundation are certainly doing this – below is a message from Anton, explaining what they are doing to help the local community.

“
The situation in Vrygrond is pretty dire, to be honest. I describe the Covid-19 situation as being a crisis within a CRISIS. Prior to Covid-19 we estimate Vrygrond ( 45000 residents ) unemployment to have been around 55-60%, this would now have escalated to at least 80%.
– Sozo has formed a partnership with Siyakhula and Healing heart foundation and are currently providing food relief for approximately 1200 residents per week. This is growing weekly.
– We are also providing hygiene packs ( soap, body cream toothpaste and sanitary towels ) to more than 100 youth beneficiaries and will roll this out to another 150 within the next two weeks.
– We have launched a campaign to ensure we provide winter immune-boosting health vitamin and mineral Supplements to 250 youth beneficiaries for the whole winter season ( May – Aug) see more details here.

We are also launching a new campaign to employ a full time professional Phsyco-social Trauma caseworker to deal with the imminent growing mental health issues as a direct result of Covid-19 trauma. See more details here.

We have been on total lockdown for more than 4 weeks (28/04/2020) and will have slight changes starting next Friday but this will be in slow phases. Sozo is very well prepared regarding our risk and distracted management protocols which cover all the government guidelines to ensure health and safety at our centre. In the meantime, we have gone online via WhatsApp with all our school students ( 105 ) providing them with tutorials and education support daily.

Our team have been amazing and I suppose one huge benefit of being based in the middle of a very volatile environment is that we have quite a bit of experience of dealing with and managing crisis situations.

We remain optimistic, hopeful and committed to serving our young people now more than ever to ensure they have every possible opportunity at achieving their goals and reaching their dreams and we know that when it comes to adversity, they always rise above! God is with us!

Thanks again for your continued care and interest and for partnering with us because without people and businesses like yours we can’t do what we do. We are all collaborating to see young people being transformed through unconditional love.
“

Just wow…

They are doing so much and during this time we will continue to keep supporting them and the people of Vrygrond.

See a video he made about the winter immune-boosting below.

Thanks again for helping the guys in South Africa!