The Nomad African Trust Spekboom project

Breadline Africa-The African Refugee Problem

Southern Africa is struggling to cope with the large number of people who are leaving Zimbabwe and other embattled countries and seeking a better life in neighbouring countries. South Africa alone has around 3 million Zimbabwean refugees. The situation is reaching crisis level and African refugee charities are struggling to cope.
Supporting an African Refugee Charity

If you can imagine a situation getting so bad that you are forced to leave everything you have ever known, then you may have an idea of the initial trauma that an African refugee goes through. But arriving in safer lands is just the beginning. The refugee then needs to settle into a foreign land and culture and start building a new life.
Breadline Africa is not specifically an African refugee charity but they do support specialised charities that tackle the various issues that African refugees face, like xenophobia, refugee children, unemployment and displacement. The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town is one such African refugee charity.

Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town is a place where refugees go and Breadline helps with both emergency relief to refugees as well as with the running of Lawrence House, a place for orphaned refugee children in town and in Woodstock.
The Scalabrini Soup Kitchen, which opened for the first time in June last year, supplies a warm meal during the winter months for the 300 odd clients (both refugees and locals) of the Welcoming Program on Wednesdays between 10 and 12 o'clock.
Later, when funds shrank, they started cooking only twice a week but delivered free meals to the people sleeping overnight outside the Nyanga Department of Home Affairs office in the hope of gaining access the following day.

Another project that Scalabrini runs is the Sethu Sewing Cooperative. On Mondays to Fridays between 9am and 4pm, as well as Saturdays between 9am and 2pm, three "old" and two new tailors will see to your sewing needs on the 2nd floor of the Scalabrini Centre at 47 Commercial Street. The local and refugee tailors can be contacted at the Scalabrini Centre under 021 - 465 6433 or via email to sethu.sewing@scalabrini.org.za if you are interested in good quality sewing that caters to a variety of tastes. 
From this month Lawrence House (in Woodstock) will start its second experience of a cottage system: six of the teenage boys will move to "Ale's House" where the aim is to give these boys the experience of independence and responsibility to help them on their way into the adult world.

According to Lawrence House' reintegration policy and the guidelines of the Department of Social Services, the project has been planned looking at the future of these boys. Each child will receive particular attention and guidance as to enable them to become real actors of their own lives. "Ale's House" is a pretty, small house with three bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and lounge located in a quiet area of Observatory. A lot of support is needed to get the house running. They are in need of electrical appliances, kitchen ware, furniture, bedding, etc.  The full list of what they need can be found on their blog (http://scalabrinicentrecapetown.wordpress.com/).


The Judah Square Community

As per usual there is lots to report from this exciting little community. First on the list is the annual Rastafari Earth Festival starting on Friday the 17th of July and running through until the 27th of July. This awesome event celebrates Haile Selassie's birthday (his 117th this year) and has become included in Knysna's annual tourism calendar. The first week of the festival  is known as "Nyahbinghi" and centres on religious themes, but the final three days are dedicated to general celebration and non-rastafari are welcome to attend what will be three days of music, stalls, food and merriment. The entry fee is R30 per person per day and local guides will be available to take newcomers around and introduce them to the community's culture.

In other news, the community has recently partnered with Cape Nature Conservation (CNC) in two separate projects. The first project has seen two tracts of land near the Khayalethu river trail demarcated for the community's use in the growing of "Red Carrot", a local herb that the community and CNC are looking into the medicinal uses of.  The second project has involved training selected community members in various nature conservation techniques with Brother Maxi and Brother Melvin recently receiving leadership certificates from CNC.
There have also been a host of other smaller happening such as Sister Lea and Brother Mau Mau having gone across to Brazil for the world trade fair to promote their curios. Sister Nancy at the crèche has been able to finish off the new lay room, the toilet as well as the kitchen and Sister Kerri and Brother Maxi were recently invited to Oakhill School to conduct a seminar on the Rastafarian religion that was so successful that they have now been asked to visit other schools with the same aim in mind.      


We hope you've enjoyed this update of our projects, if so, please forward this newsletter onto people that you think might be interested in helping African development, or refer them to the Nomad African Trust website  for more news. Don't be shy to send us a mail at info@nomadafricantrust.co.za if you have any comments or queries. Looking forward to hearing from you, until next time, sala gahle, tot siens!