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I am sure that many of you wonder just what happens to your contributions when they arrive in South Africa so we thought to use today’s report to introduce some of our volunteers and guide you through a “Thursday in the life of KAS SA”.

Wendy and I arrive very early in the morning to set up the office for the day.  I am the designated Catering Manager and like to provide nutritious snacks for the volunteers so they are “fueled” and ready for the day.

After laying out the food of the day, as above, I head to the Post Office to collect the mail for the week and meet up with my trusty friend, Anton, who helps me load the mail, take it back to the office and unload it all.

Our volunteers arrive and jump straight into opening and sorting the mail.  Thanks to Gina (our IT and Admin guru), we have a new chart which will detail what is opened each month which is great motivation.

The number of volunteers varies from week to week, but since moving into the office this figure has more than doubled.  They are so efficient that within a few hours the mail is opened and sorted.  Some of the regulars are:

         Lesley                    Trish                        Cathy                     Wandi                 Moss!

When the mail is all opened, the volunteers help to sort stock.

Wendy making blanket packs.

Thanks to your generous contributions via the online shop, I was able to buy reams and reams of white and coloured paper to distribute.

Our stationery room is wonderfully organised and we are looking forward to being able to assist many of the Day Care centres with stationery.

Many of the volunteers design blankets to take home and sew……..  and here are some of this week’s results.

Donna sewed together these four beautiful blankets this week!

They also help to unpick the few “less than perfect” blankets that occasionally find their way through the system.   This happens where campaigns or competitions have been run during which the speed of sewing together blankets can overtake the importance of care.  Thankfully this is not a significant problem and our volunteers are happy to make it part of their contribution to fix them up.

Lindi, Seble and I fixing odds and ends.

We are delighted to have young volunteers from time to time and it is such a pleasure to see them getting involved in whatever way they are able.  It is always good to make children aware of those in their peer group who lead very different lives.

This week we were joined by my daughter Sian, visiting from Cape Town, and my three grandchildren Luca, Gemma and Lila.  Matt, who is a regular volunteer, joined us today too.

At the end of the day everyone helps to tidy up, with Wandi leading the way by sweeping the carpet…. we need to get her a vacuum cleaner!

As always, we need to thank YOU, our contributors for giving us the opportunity to work with the wonderful items they send – everyone leaves feeling tired but blessed and this is the reason they return week after week!