December Newsletter

 

We are actually in the UK, having been given a gift of a flight home from our friends in Oasis South Africa. We have been praying for this and I’m sure you know how in your mind you go through all the ways that God could answer this; well but we never thought it would be this way.

 

We are delighted to be back, it being particular significant for Nicola to spend time with her father for the first time since she left him unconscious after his heart surgery. Godfrey is now making good progress and looks healthier then prior to the op. We will not be able to see you all unfortunately, but we do wish you all a happy Christmas.

 

Nicola has had her own medical emergency since we last wrote. We were interviewing our students on a one-to-one basis in a coffee shop in Jo’burg, when Nicola fell and cut her head having missed a step. It was very dramatic, and there was lots of blood, but the café manager had been an army para- medic in Bosnia so he took control and knew what to do. Eventually the ambulance arrived, the hospital doctor was good and Nicola only required a couple of clips.

 

At the beginning of December we had our end of year party, for all partners, volunteers and beneficiaries. We had about eighty people for lunch at a venue near Cosmo City, and it went really well. Since then Jo’burg has emptied. Everyone goes on holiday in December and the whole city shuts down for about 3 weeks. Because of this exodus all Christmassy events happen in November so by the 3^rd week of November we had been to 2 Christmas parties and a carol concert – it felt slightly surreal especially as it is so warm and it really didn’t feel like Christmas at all.

 

We have been busy trying to organise next years programme, as well as assisting with the other projects. Chantel is working to get her Community Health Worker training programme accredited and we have had to get a whole raft of policies and procedures in place. Nicola especially has been doing all the HR ones and her experience has proved so useful.

 

We have a bit of a crisis over funding. Our main sponsor of the school leavers programme (Xstrata) have suddenly at the last minute said that they may have to withdraw some or all of the promised funding. Do pray that they will honour their commitment.

 

We have found a house in Cosmo City to run all our projects in the area. We haven’t finally secured it yet because of the funding situation, but really hope that it works out.

 

We will take 40 new students into our School Leavers programme every 6 months. The programme lasts up to a year for each student, the first 6 months being training and the second 6 months being assistance and support into further education, work or learnerships.

For the 6 months training, the students will get 2 days of training, some community service and hopefully 3 days of part time work. One day will be ICT training, Net2Work or ICDL; the other will be education and life skills. So far we have the following content:

 

 

These are being delivered by a mixture of organisations offering their services free or at low cost and volunteers. The only bit missing so far is a suitable English course, though we have a volunteer to deliver it. Graham is taking on two junior assistants who he needs to train to take over from him.

 

As the house has got fairly small rooms, we can only get 10 computers in at a pinch, so Graham will be repeating his training 4 days a week. The 40 students will be split into 2 groups for the life skills training.

 

We start the year with a residential camp for the students. We have a group from Joanna’s church in Sheffield coming to run it, including Joanna, so that will be excellent.

 

Please pray that the funding will come in time; that we secure the house for the programme and that it all comes together.

 

Thanks for your love, prayers and support, we hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a very happy 2008.

 

Graham & Nicola