Empowering Girls and Women as Mothers

Dear Friends and partners of Keep The Dream196,

Greetings to you all and welcome to the KTD196 Community for supporters such as yourself. I want to say hearty THANKYOU to everyone for your support and encouragement that we have received. If you look at the bottom of the report you can rate us and share what you like about KTD196 or why you chose to support us. This is essential feedback which I share with the staff and board.

Well the weather has certainly become very wintery here in Tzaneen. Saturday it was a beautiful 30C and overnight it went down to 5C and has struggled to rise above 24C during the day, which for us is still very cool.

I share this as we are excitedly preparing for three (3) week of camp! Yes, I know, camping in winter is not “normal” however unfortunately (for us cold frogs) this is the best time to reach the most young people because we are not competing with other school holidays or competing events.  Clearly we are committed to doing whatever is necessary to deliver our program to upwards of 250 children…or more during this camping season!

We have been given funding to run two leadership training courses for 50children and two Spider trainings. This is a monitoring and evaluation tool that the kids use to rate their groups performance and to create a plan to achieve their goals. Plus during this time we will be training 30adults in how to run our program and adhere to all the bylaws. As if that isn't enough, we are also taking children who are self-funding to camp to enable them to achieve their badges for various activities required to advance through the program. It’s an exciting time which you might like to follow on our facebook site, the link is below.

Camp exposes the youth to more than just life under the stars in canvas army style tents. They also learn how to cooperate and negotiate, working together in small groups, learning new skills such as: survival skills, outdoor cooking, orienteering, mapping, compass work, environmental education and leadership skills, all of which happens around the core work we want to do.

This work is indeed life transforming and we could not do this work without people like you who faithfully support our efforts. On behalf of every child and family impacted by Keep the Dream196, Thank you!

If you have any questions or would like any more information, please feel free to reach me at +270732742080 or keepthedream196@gmail.com

The testimony below is of a young man, who I am proud to say, has become a husband and father. Who is madly in love with his wife and who treats her with such respect which is not the norm, Harry says its because of the training KTD196 has given him and he is determined to be a wonderful father (since his own ran away when his youngest sibling was born) and husband. I hope you enjoy his story.

Thankyou

Louise

 

Before I joined KTD196 I lived with my mum, my aunt, my granny and my siblings. I was a very naughty boy and was always disobedient and jumping out of home to go to the streets with my friends. We would always go to the shabeens and drink the beer left in the bottles behind the taverns, also pick up stompies of cigarettes and smoke them. We would come home early in the morning or in the middle of the night then go to school and fall asleep.

One day my aunt Emily said she needed me to help her deliver some food parcels to some poor people in my village and I needed to carry the food packages. My heart broke with what I saw. People that were starving and eating grass and dirt to fill their stomachs, I realised what I was doing was just rubbish. I wanted to help these people especially the children. I didn’t want to be a bad boy any longer.

My aunt was trained to do scouts and I went along to help her. I was 13yrs old. I didn’t understand it well but grew to love it. If I speak of My Home it has always been keep the dream196. Where should I start, well one great giant of mine Patrice Motsepe once said "I've come to understand that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are". Why this quote? As a Scout my honour has always been doing my best, to serve my purpose, my family, my country and reflect true leadership in our generation.

When I it was Dec when I was 15yrs my aunt died, she was the bread winner for the family.

Then in Jan, the next month, my mum died. This left my granny, me and my two siblings and no money.

Through KTD196 help we registered for 3 orphan grants and we were successful. Then as the head of the household I was responsible to see that everything worked well. My granny wasn’t well, so I employed a carer to look after my granny and to come every day to do the washing, cooking and cleaning for us. I would take my siblings to school and then I would go to school as well. It was hard but through Gods grace and KTD196 I made it. We made it.

I remember when Mom Lou said she was going to take the Scout Group away from me, because I was now the leader. I begged her not to because it was the only thing I did just for me. I would die if that died as well. I needed the Scouts program. It has taught me so much which I used every day back then to lead my family. If I've mentioned the word Mom in the past 10 years since my late Mom passed on, it was Louise Batty and u are a great Mom!

Mom Lou would check to see everything was working well at home, she would make sure my grades weren’t slipping and that Scouts was working well. Everyone at KTD196 became my mother and would look after me. The support and dedication from Keep the Dream196 and its staff has always been amazing.

I remember my first week of college, I was with Andrew and Sheila (supporters and donors of KTD196) we were watching some of the Mechanical engineering projects Andrew often worked on during his career. Little did I know Andrew was building my desire for Mechanical engineering and with their support, scouts values and training from KTD196,  I toiled hard and reflected leadership skills, team work and a focus that has always bring a question to my foremen “Who trained this young Man" and deep within I always say I'm a true son of Keep The Dream196 and a Scout.

A few years back I spoke as an Orphan scout, then as a college student and now due to the support of Keep the Dream196 and the great Elizabeth (Program Manager of KTD196), Andrew and Sheila, the Field Officers who became my moms and Mom Lou, I speak as a qualified artisan (fitter and turner) of Keep the Dream196.

I want people reading this testimony to understand, I am one of thousands that KTD196 has helped on to the right path. Please support Keep The Dream196 every month to help them help others. They are making a real difference.

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