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In July last year we were joined by Rita and Mieke from Germany and university student, Blythe, for a distribution on what had to be the coldest day of our winter.  We visited a large Day Care Centre in an extremely impoverished area called Kliptown. 

This drawing by one of the children described exactly how everyone was feeling that day!

But, we soon fixed that with the lovely warm blankets, beanies, tops and hand warmers we distributed.

We visited the very young children first and spent some time playing with them and warming them with our hugs.  We distributed a number of KAS Cuddles in this class too.

The children were all indoors in their classrooms because of the bitter cold and distributing in the confined space was a challenge, but at least the bustle of bodies and the lovely blankets quickly warmed the classrooms and cheered up the children!

Blythe commented as follows about this distribution in her blog, “One by one, each child received a blanket, a beanie and a pair of gloves. It was in those moments where the smile on the children’s faces warmed my heart. It is moments like these, where I am truly grateful for my ability to give someone the gift of warmth, security...and a small piece of my heart.  A small act of kindness that changed my perspective, and a big act of kindness that changed someone’s day!”

Rita has supported KAS for many years now and we continue to receive parcels from her on a regular basis.  It was wonderful to meet her personally and we wish that you all could have the opportunity to experience KAS “in person”.

The many, many hugs that day, and your beautiful blankets enabled us to leave these children far warmer and more comfortable than we had found them!

 From left to right dishing out love and hugs is Rita, Ronda, Wandi, Mieke and Blythe.

Many of you may have seen the recent media coverage of the wave of xenophobic attacks taking place in South Africa.  It saddens all of us at KAS to see the intolerance of some of our fellow countrymen as we only pray for a peaceful resolution to this issue to be reached.  We have continued to visit Diepsloot and Soweto for distributions and for the start of our knitting training programme sponsored by Med-Lemon.  However, we are all, naturally, mindful of the possible dangers we may encounter when visiting such potentially (and currently) volatile areas … and I want to thank all those volunteers who have loyally continued to “soldier on” in any case.

With regard to the very exciting Med-Lemon project, our train the trainer workshop went well and we have five trainers and two assistants on board.  Our first two training sessions took place last week, as touched on above, and were a great success.  52 men, women (and even a 12 year old child) are now able to master the basic skills of knitting!  They will be knitting navy blue scarves as well as squares, for KAS, and hopefully they will develop their skills to the point where they are able to carry on and knit items in order to sell them and make a small living.

One of the groups learning to knit!

We received a mountain of mail again last week, but I am pleased to report that the volunteers on Tuesday would not leave until every parcel was opened and accounted for so we are 100% up to date!