News – Life and Vision for Kids

Life and Vision for Kids 2024

2024 was another eventful and successful year for us.

At the beginning of the year, we were able to recruit a very experienced vocational school teacher, Mr Wayne de Wet, to work with the children and young people.

As a result of the first year of work lessons and the experience gained, the interest aroused among pupils, teachers and parents, the year 2024 took on an incredible momentum of its own.

This was particularly important because the parents and some of the children were initially rather sceptical due to a lack of knowledge about teaching practical skills

The initial scepticism has now turned into enthusiasm.

64 schoolchildren took part in the ongoing lessons. In addition, young people were given the opportunity to learn the basics of handling tools and processing wood materials. As a result, their chances on the labour market have increased enormously and all of them have found employment.

Once again, we were able to inspire a pupil in his final year, who had shown no motivation in school lessons, to learn on a practical level.

As a result, he was accepted into a vocational school.

It was a year of big projects for the children. As some of them had already had their second year of woodworking lessons, they wanted to try their hand at bigger things.

With Wayne’s experience, incredible things were created. The children began to build chairs, benches, cupboards and tables for themselves. The older children added a canopy to the workroom so that they could work outside in bad weather or strong sunshine.

At the end of the year, Wayne and the pupils built a wooden hut which now serves as a materials store.

Where there is a lot of light, there is also shadow. We couldn’t break this rule either. Our employee and instructor from the very beginning, Martin Wood, ended his employment in October 2024 to take on new tasks.

Nevertheless, we were still able to manage all tasks with Jo-Ann and Wayne and are working on a plan to collaborate with a friendly foundation this year. This would allow us to make considerable gains on the personnel side without increasing costs.

After providing the girls’ football team in Lynedoch with all the equipment last year, the beneficiaries in 2024 were the young men.

We also covered the costs of swimming lessons, equipped the girls’ netball team and funded the equipment for the chess group.

All the chess boards were made by our special needs pupil Clayton together with Wayne.

All of our 5 school children whose school costs have been covered by the LVK are developing very well. Jason deserves special mention. We took Jason on 3 years ago when he had no chance of getting a place at a school. Thanks to our good relations with Somerset House School, where we had already placed 2 children, Jason was given the chance to be admitted to the school in an organised way. He is now a top pupil with outstanding talent in music, sport and maths and a role model in his class.

We could write a whole book about 2024, so many big and small things have happened. It was therefore not easy to summarise 2024 briefly and concisely.

The most important thing, however, was to see many enthusiastic children, to provide help for a positive start in life, to impart knowledge and skills for a self-determined life and to be able to experience the pride of the children and young people in the skills they have learnt at the LVK Woodworking House – Siyafunda.

None of this would have been possible without our donors and supporters. Therefore, on behalf of the children, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all of them. Please continue to be well-disposed towards us. Because it is incredible what can be achieved when your donations flow 1:1 directly into the projects. We will continue to vouch for this in the future.

We wish you a healthy and successful 2025

Busy hands with great projects!

27.06.2024

Yesterday we had workshop for students from the SA INDABA organisation, an NPO with a wide range of aid projekts that, among other things, train teachers in Montessori ideas, with complete success!

16.04.2024

After the holidays we have a few new projects that the boys and girls are doing together!

05.02.2024

Reports before the holidays!

06.12.2023

Little builders on work!

25.08.2023

First projects

We were able to start the lessons in our training center “Siyafunda” and under the guidance of Martin the first projects were implemented. The children and young people tried their hand at wood with various tools and saws.

The guidance of Martin

with the first attempts

and results, die Kids can be proud of!

The benefit concert

On Sunday, 05.03.2023, we were able to organise a benefit concert for our partner SI with a lot ofsupportfrom friends. With Klaus Wäspy from Nürtingen and his daughter Larissa as a soprano from Vienna, two thoroughbred musicians will give a 3-hour concert free of charge for the benefit of the children. A colourful bouquet of opera, operetta, a joint performance with children, as well as a round of rockand pop thrilled the guests on Sunday afternoon in pouring rain.

R50,000 in donations were collected. We would like to thank all those who made this afternoon possible with their help, advice anddonations.