Help Pay Volmoed Staff Wages in lean winter months

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR GENEROUS DONORS!

As this year ends, we are grateful! Despite all the difficulties of these times, rising food and fuel prices, hard times for everyone, we are still standing and still joyful! Thanks to generous donors we were able to give a food gift voucher and a small bonus to each of our staff members this last month of the year.

Our staff news is that Nomveliso’s premature baby came home in October, and has been doing well since then. Her daughter Akuminto came to work one day so that we could all meet her. Our staff family is supportive of one another during hard times, and were very glad to see Nomveliso back at work in late November after her maternity leave ended.

Our staff member Maggie is very happy, as generous donors provided the funds for a much needed cataract surgery for her eye. The surgeon was willing to do it for free, and several donors contributed to the hospital fees. Maggie was overjoyed to be able to see properly out of her right eye after the bandages were removed, and is still very excited about her new eye. A big thank you to these donors!

We managed to have a first follow up to our healing of memories workshop for our staff and residents that took place in August, facilitated by the Institute for Healing of Memories. After the workshop, all the participants asked if we could continue the process of sharing stories in this meaningful way. We gathered to talk about how our lives have been since the workshop, what lessons were learned, what we had experienced. It was a remarkable time of story sharing, as person after person talked about how life changing the workshop was for them and named specific ways in which their lives are now different. As previously reported, Volmoed is a microcosm of South Africa, with differences of race, gender, religion, languages, class, and education. This work continues as part of our vision and mission of healing and reconciliation. We are so grateful that this is making a difference to the lives of our staff and that it continues to shape our life together.

There was a lovely staff year end outing, again funded by your donations. It included lunch together and a visit to the local brand new facility of the National Sea Rescue Institute, where they learned much about this important work, received refreshments and generally had a great time.

In this holiday season Volmoed has been full or mostly full for most of the weeks and weekends, thankfully. Staff are keeping busy! As the year ends, a huge thank you from all of us for your generous support throughout this year. We are so grateful!