Laureus Sport for Good Response Fund - South Africa
In South Africa, Laureus Sport for Good supports over 30 community-based development programmes that use sport as a tool to help young people overcome violence, discrimination and disadvantage in their lives. Unfortunately, during the covid-19 pandemic, many of these programmes have been heavily impacted with young people facing an increased risk of exposure to violence, including sexual abuse, exploitation and challenges to their mental health.
The Sport for Good Response Fund aims to ensure that Sport for Development programmes can continue in times of crisis and that vital new channels to young people can be created to ensure that they get the support they need both now and when we begin to emerge from this pandemic.
The Sport for Good Response Fund aims to ensure that Sport for Development programmes can continue in times of crisis and that vital new channels to young people can be created to ensure that they get the support they need both now and when we begin to emerge from this pandemic.
Singita Lowveld Trust
The Singita Lowveld Trust (SLT) is Singita’s non-profit partner in South Africa; an independent organisation responsible for bringing our conservation vision to life by driving forward strategic conservation initiatives that fulfil its commitment to biodiversity, sustainability and community partnerships. SLT focuses on making quality education and skills development opportunities available to the communities surrounding the lodges.
Key conservation projects undertaken by SLT in Singita’s Kruger Park and Sabi Sand concessions include protecting and restoring reserve biodiversity, extensive anti-poaching operations, a community culinary school, supporting 17 Early Childhood Development Centres, Digital literacy and leopard habitat and behaviour research.
The devastating impact of Covid-19 has left many families near Sabi Sand and the Kruger National Park without access to food, which prompted lodges and non-profit organisations in the area to assist the neediest families with emergency food parcels.
The Singita Lowveld Trust has been supporting 17 Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centres for many years, and while the focus has always been on enabling communities to create better futures for themselves, it is necessary to address their most pressing need. SLT is therefore temporarily extending its support to provide emergency food relief during the lockdown period. 85 families without any income or social grants have already been identified, and have received food parcels. The parcels contain basic staples to provide for the nutritional needs of a family of 4 for one month, costing $32 or R650 each.
https://conservation.singita.com/project/emergency-food-relief-program-covid-19/
https://empowersafrica.org/partners/singita/
Empowers Africa has partnered with Singita to provide a cost-effective solution to fundraising by acting as their fiscal sponsor. Any donations made will be granted to the Singita Lowveld Trust, which works in partnership with Singita.
https://empowersafrica.org/partners/singita/
Henna Creche / New Beginnings
Henna is an ECD centre in Huntington village providing quality education to about 170 children yearly. Teachers are assisted with ECD training and Bridging Courses to further their skills and qualifications. Henna is the original project that has grown from a mud-walled building with 20 children in 1991 to a brick and mortar pre-school with four classrooms, a kitchen, storerooms and 2 vegetable gardens that feed the children and the community.
New Beginnings is a program that started in 2008 which enables teenage mothers in the village to return to school and complete their studies. The mothers have no means to support their children and often drop out of school to look for work. They leave their babies at New Beginnings, which now occupies a classroom at Henna. This is a safe place where the babies from birth to 2 years old are cared for during the day. The centre has 7 children currently.
Henna is to get a kitchen and bathroom revamp, replacement of classroom floors and addition of new classroom when funding allows.
Covid-19 has closed the preschool, putting many children that depend on the school for food at risk. Teachers are also not receiving salaries as parents are unable to pay school fees.
EsiDulini Community Trust
PROJECT DIGNITY: Empowering girls to finish school. Eliminating the stigma of menstruation. Rewriting the destiny of our planet. Offering sustainable, earth-friendly options to girls in need.
It is devastating to think that up to 60% of rural African girls drop out of school because of menstruation and a lack of access to basic sanitary wear, leaving them socially, economically and politically marginalised.
Project Dignity is designed to empower pubescent school girls from impoverished, rural backgrounds, to complete their education with dignity by equipping them with a long-term solution in the form of washable sanitary pads and panties. These packs will allow girls to attend school more consistently, to achieve their full academic potential and to make confident choices about the future.
The EsiDulini Community Trust, in partnership with the Sabi Sand Pfunanani Trust, has identified the schools of 11 villages surrounding the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.
Statistics show that there are over 4000 female learners of pubescent age in the schools of these villages. It is our aim to deliver dignity to every teenage girl in our area by providing ongoing access to the packs of washable sanitary towels.
With $20 (approximately R350), we can offer a girl the confidence to stay in school when puberty sets in.
This is an ongoing initiative that is funded entirely by the generosity of our guests, for which we are so grateful. The aim is to return to primary schools every year to support the emerging teenagers.
We would be delighted to welcome you to partner with us in making this fundamental difference in the education of girls
from impoverished local communities.
Family Food Parcel Fundraiser
The Thornybush Community Projects, together with Nourish Eco Village, have set out to lend a hand to those most vulnerable in our local communities, with financial assistance in the form of a voucher.
Our aim is to raise enough funds to assist families who have been identified as needing urgent assistance for the months of May, June and July 2020.
We are calling these the crisis months. Food security has become a major issue in this lock-down period and we want to make sure that our identified families in need, are at the very least, able to feed themselves.
We started the Thornybush Family Food Fundraiser with the intention of sending actual parcels of food to each family, however we discovered that there were some issues involved with this approach – mainly revolving around security and government guidelines.
So, we decided to move the food parcel into the virtual world with a food voucher, which would be SMS’d to each recipient, so that they could go and buy what they feel they need from nearby grocery stores.
We have based each voucher amount on what a basic basket of essential food and toiletry items would be every month. 1 Voucher = R500/ 27USD / 23GBP or 25EURO.
Times have changed dramatically in this COVID-19 dust cloud. Families are battling. Those who were employed, have had to face a new stark reality of furlough or worse, retrenchment. Those who were already unemployed and struggling, are now in an extremely vulnerable situation.
Help us to secure at the very least, the basic food items for beloved community families by donating and/or sharing this initiative with your family and friends. Every little bit helps!
The Royal Portfolio Foundation
As the world battles to come to terms with the human and economic impact of Covid-19, we are acutely aware of the challenges facing communities and conservation projects in Africa.
Even though our hotels are closed The Royal Portfolio Foundation continues to support critical community and conservation projects including counter-poaching initiatives at Royal Malewane and various Covid-19 Relief Feeding Schemes which need our help now more than ever.
At The Royal Portfolio we believe passionately in investing in Africa. In keeping with our Purpose and Values, we strive to uplift local communities, promote conservation and protect the environment.
Sustainable tourism is about ensuring a long term future for African tourism based on partnership and community benefit. Revenue from tourism should be used to ensure sustainability of the industry to educate and to create jobs and to conserve Africa’s precious wildlife and spectacular landscapes for generations to come.
The Royal Portfolio Foundation was established by the Biden Family in order to give back to our local communities by contributing towards various upliftment and conservation projects within our Three Crowns sustainability framework.
Each of The Royal Portfolio’s properties supports a number of projects relevant to their unique location and particular situation.
Hoedspruit Elephant Rehabilitation and Development (HERD)
Jabulani currently looks after 15 elephants, and contributes where possible to the high costs of caring for Khanyisa, the albino elephant calf presently in the care of Hoedspruit Elephant Rehabilitation and Development (HERD) during her rehabilitation and phased integration.
With the onset of global travel bans and COVID-19 Lockdown in South Africa, our responsibilities remain the same in caring for and feeding these special animals.
We have always relied on tourism to our lodge to help cover the costs of providing exceptional care for the rescued elephants, to feeding, protecting and caring for the herd that has come to be such an incredible story of survival and love in Africa, as the herd continues to thrive and to accept new orphans who have lost their own herds.
It has always been part of our business model that every guest staying at Jabulani contributes to the expenses associated with caring for the herd. However, these funds only become available for use after the guests have stayed at Jabulani. This presents an entirely new challenge with both local and global travel restrictions in place and not being able to welcome visitors to Jabulani.
The conservation of elephants has become more and more vital in recent years as the poaching epidemic started to rise dramatically, compared to previous decades. The detrimental effects of the human-elephant conflict, including poaching, can be seen on the ground with the increased number of displaced or abandoned elephant orphans. Khanyisa at HERD is an example of this, having been abandoned after a vicious snare used by poachers trapped and brutally injured her.
The increased threat of poaching has especially been looming over us during the COVID-19 Lockdowns that have caused many people to lose income and jobs, and to seek out other means of making a living. The reported poaching attacks on wildlife have been increasing during this time. Our responsibility to support the rescued Jabulani herd and HERD orphanage continue, but so does the need to keep the orphanage and Jabulani herd afloat and ready should the need arise to take in other orphans or elephants in need. The resources to do so, however, have dwindled with the block on tourism and fundraising remains a vital and the key way to maintain our work in elephant conservation on the ground.
The funds raised will go directly to ensuring the valued and essential elephant carers’ continued employment, as well as that of the rest of the vital team on-site, the support for the herd through food, veterinary care, stable maintenance as well as anti-poaching contributions in the reserve.
Mirantha Youth Development Centre
The beginnings of this programme found its routes in 2007 through an inspiring woman, Happiness Lubisi.
Happiness has always had a deep passion for her community. She volunteered at a local school Funjwa Primary School in Acornhoek, where she was fortunate to work with a humanitarian crew from Alaska whose vision was to promote health work in underfunded South African schools. This was where her heart for children began. She started helping children gain access to birth certificates, social grants and food parcels. With no centre to work from she did all her work through home visits.
In 2010 she enrolled as a social worker in order to gain more knowledge and experience. Despite graduating in 2012 she was unable to find employment; so she continued her work with the children of Acornhoek, funding this through working as a hawker.
In 2014 Happiness was appointed as a Tree & Waste Ambassador for the Wildlands Conservation Trust. The programme was about educating schools and community members about the importance of indigenous trees and recycling. She has also worked with other NGO’s such as Child Line, Nourish and Seeds of Light.
Her youth work never ceased though, and in 2016 the Mirantha Youth Development Centre was registered as an official Non-Profit Organisation. The programme currently cares for about 80 orphans and vulnerable youth; offering food, clothes and emotional support. Her desire is to give hope and a home to these “forgotten children”.
Funding is needed not just for food and clothing, but to develop the centre and get children back into school. The Imbali Family have adopted Happiness and the Mirantha Youth Development Centre into their community portfolio to give this beautiful project every possible chance of succeeding.
Happiness has always had a deep passion for her community. She volunteered at a local school Funjwa Primary School in Acornhoek, where she was fortunate to work with a humanitarian crew from Alaska whose vision was to promote health work in underfunded South African schools. This was where her heart for children began. She started helping children gain access to birth certificates, social grants and food parcels. With no centre to work from she did all her work through home visits.
In 2010 she enrolled as a social worker in order to gain more knowledge and experience. Despite graduating in 2012 she was unable to find employment; so she continued her work with the children of Acornhoek, funding this through working as a hawker.
In 2014 Happiness was appointed as a Tree & Waste Ambassador for the Wildlands Conservation Trust. The programme was about educating schools and community members about the importance of indigenous trees and recycling. She has also worked with other NGO’s such as Child Line, Nourish and Seeds of Light.
Her youth work never ceased though, and in 2016 the Mirantha Youth Development Centre was registered as an official Non-Profit Organisation. The programme currently cares for about 80 orphans and vulnerable youth; offering food, clothes and emotional support. Her desire is to give hope and a home to these “forgotten children”.
Funding is needed not just for food and clothing, but to develop the centre and get children back into school. The Imbali Family have adopted Happiness and the Mirantha Youth Development Centre into their community portfolio to give this beautiful project every possible chance of succeeding.
The single objective of the WARRIOR500 initiative is to raise funds to support the communities that have been negatively affected by the impact COVID-19 has had on the travel industry in South Africa. Community projects are of the utmost importance to all of us who have the privilege of working in the tourism industry in this country. In fact, every visitor who comes to this magnificent country makes a contribution to these very worthy projects simply by staying at our beautiful lodges and hotels. The lodges that we will walk through during our 500km trek are lodges we have worked very closely with for more than 25 years and each any every one has on going community initiatives that are being very sorely hit by the lack of funding due to the massive impact Covid-19 has had on tourism revenues. It is our mission with YOUR help to fill this void until our guests return to Africa.