Greetings Friends of Hope in South Africa!

We're feeling invigorated as we take a look back on everything we've accomplished this past year. Your gracious support and investment in the communities we assist in the Karoo region of South Africa always show tangible results in the lives of the adults and children. For 19 years we've been addressing the mulitiple issues surrounding poverty in and around the Richmond Community and the progress we've made isn't possible without you.

In 2021, we were thrilled to unveil our expanded E-Learning Center which enabled us to accommodate more users, install a community hotspot that improved our WiFi access and provide more up-to-date computers to the children and adults in Richmond.

In 2022, you joined our Construction Crew and we were able to complete the newly expanded and renovated Soup Kitchen.

In 2023, we were able to securely install a generator that has been a beacon of hope in tandem with the well we dug a few years ago–both providing necessities that are not in abundant supply.

Our goals for 2024 will include getting a used pick up truck to provide much needed transportation to facilitate a range of activities at the Richmond Community Center. These activities include expanding our soup kitchen operations at the squatter camp and transporting the children to athletic events in the neighboring towns. Our other big project is introducing the South Africa Bike Project sponsored by our Rotary partners into our Karoo Communities. More details on these efforts and other endeavors to follow in future correspondence.

In the meantime we want to share with you all that we were able to do beyond the bricks and mortar of our organization.

Thank you for keeping the lights on and the computers humming with reliable power. Please know that we truly appreciate your investment in our work.

Mary Nagle
President, Hope in South Africa

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Let’s Take a Look Back at Our 2023 Achievements...

You really rose to the occasion and helped us to Power UP in 2023 by providing the investment and support needed to install and secure our new generator. This is a major game changer for our Community Center. The country has been plagued by power outages known as load shedding. This major improvement is allowing us to function better and continue to provide the services the people depend upon us for—we can't thank you enough!

We're excited about the momentum we have been able to achieve following the special challenges we faced during and after the COVID pandemic. We had two groups of travelers spend time with the community members we serve and our staff this past year. We were reminded of the importance of being together in person and how important that time is toward achieving our goals. We are beyond proud of our ability to deliver such an array of assistance throughout the year and partner with you to be providers of hope.

Our partnerships have resulted in more positive attention amongst the local government and a change in our designation as a Community Development Centre within the Department of Social Development and our District Municipality. We are eager to receive more support from the governing bodies and support agencies in our region which will allow us to expand our ability to serve our local community.

We continued our efforts to bring bikes into the community, worked toward better infrastructure for Richmond, funded "No Means No" Training and distributed Menstrual Cups in the Karoo region.

See our many accomplishments below. The stress is on OUR, because none of this is possible without your continued commitment to our mission.

2023 Activities & Accomplishments

Nutritional Feeding Scheme
E-Learning classes for students and adults
Sports for Development—Educating Youth on Life Skills through Sport
Laid the groundwork for our Bike Initiative
Awareness Programs for Gender Based Violence (GBV), Underage Drinking, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD) and HIV
Girls Mentoring Projects
Computer and Gender Based Violence (GBV) Training for Coaches
Reading Coaching
Delivered interactive experiential learning activities with children and youth, increasing their knowledge of the harmful effects of substance abuse
Engaged community members in FASD, GBV prevention activities and events, increasing their knowledge of prevention tactics and availability of local health services
Participation in the Rotary Karoo E-Club

Soup Kitchen

Our dedicated and hardworking staff served nutritional meals daily to children aged 3 to 18 with a total of 46,874 meals at our Community Center and in the nearby Squatters Camp.

Our partnerships with the local farmers who supply a large quantity of meat and Food Forward SA's monthly pallet of food make this possible. These supplies come in varying quantities and the 2022 kitchen renovation gives us the ability to freeze and store the donated food.

We continued progress with our 5-year paving program. We also need to continue with our plans to install paving around our buildings for dust control in order to protect our investments in the soup kitchen and E-Learning Center. Our dust storms are like your blizzards and paving has been identified as a way to minimize the damage and ongoing maintenance. It's working and what we have installed so far is really making a difference!

Computer Center

We are excited about the many opportunities created since our E-Learning Center's grand opening in 2021. We can accommodate 40 students at once to assist with a host of programs including a constant stream of children and adults who are provided basic computer skills, typing, use of the Internet, research, homework, assistance with applications to universities, creating resumes, job applications, and access to email accounts to look for jobs, applying for assorted funding and state tertiary funding (National Student Financial Aid Scheme - NASFAS).

We provided computer training to just shy of 1,000 individuals from our community, including our staff in 2023.Students pop in to research for school projects, general homework assistance, printing of documents and many young children learn about using computers by playing games.

We partnered with the Karoo Development Trust in Loxton and developed a three-day program assisting 60 community members with computer training. The goal of the program is to provide youth with basic personal and computer skills to give them the tools they need to navigate challenges and seek better opportunities for a brighter future. Each participant was an unemployed youth that completed the course, guided to create an email account and went on to participate in various local government employment initiatives.

We also took our sport program participants through an occupational readiness course which teaches them about time and money management, career assessment, job hunting, CV/resume writing/content, interviewing, image/appearance and other planning and organizational skills that job seekers need.

Promoting Healthy Lifestyles

Beyond our nutritional endeavors, we promoted healthy lifestyles through daily program delivery that included sports, reading programs, computer lessons and mentoring.

We provide a Life Skills Program with a variety of objectives and achievements via E-Learning, Sports for Development - which educated youth on life skills through sport and of course our Nutritional Feeding Scheme. Some of the skills covered in these programs include self-confidence, self-respect, interpersonal skills, empathy, compassion, managing emotions, personal responsibility, dependability, integrity, work ethics, positive attitude, conflict management, teamwork, verbal and written communication, cooperation, decision-making and critical thinking.

Further, through our Sport-Based Curriculum, we offered Awareness Programs for Gender Based Violence (GBV), Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD), underage drinking and HIV.

In addition, our Girls Mentoring projects included the continuation and expansion of our Netball Team. The goal of this program is to broaden the perspectives of the girls and demonstrate to them that the world is a lot bigger than Richmond. We want them to see first-hand that they can compete on an equal level. Team members have been educated so that they can serve as mentors in their own communities.

More updates about their successes in the future!

Serving the Larger Community

We are working with the local municipality to improve the basic water and sewer infrastructure and have held meetings to move forward with the replacement of critical infrastructure. We hope to have new equipment installed during this year to address the failing infrastructure in our local community.

The new generator is an integral part of our mission to provide computer training and assistance as the computer workstations and the connectivity we provide are often the only means community members have to access the resources available to them. In addition, the reliable power source keeps our kitchen open and our food frozen until we need it for our Soup Kitchen. Prepping the storage facility, purchasing the generator and securing it were all accomplished in 2023.