It’s quiet at the Mini Care Centre for Abused Children, save for a few older kids knocking around in the backyard. Besides those taking time out from studying for exams, all the residents are at school.
The children here and others like them at the Hillbrow-Berea Home of Hope will probably be indifferent to a football tournament happening in Mmabatho on Saturday. Yet they will be the real winners when Orlando Pirates, Kaizer Chiefs, Platinum Stars and Bloemfontein Celtic fight out the Telkom Charity Cup (TCC).
The Cup has been running since 1986 and has, in two decades, raised more than R27-million for worthy causes. Last year’s event saw R3,6-million distributed among 61 charities.
Strangely, it is the fans — who organisers acknowledge are poor themselves — that often generate a large portion of this money. A portion of the phone-in and SMS vote-line money is donated to the NSL/Telkom Charity Cup Trust that dispenses funds.
And it’s the fans who have extended helping hands to places like the Mini Care Centre in a quiet street in the south of Jozi. Assistant matron Jean Denham says the money it received from last year’s event ”was like a miracle”.
The home, which shelters 23 abused children — and in some cases their terrified and traumatised mothers — was quite literally in the dark when it was awarded R75 000 by the TCC.
”We had no power,” says Denham, ”our power board had blown, one of our two geysers had blown, we really were crying out for help.”
The money was used immediately to fix the geysers, the switchboard and buy an old Kombi to help staff and residents get around. It also went towards rebuilding the centre’s perimeter wall, as well as putting up a palisade in front of the building to improve security, says Denham.
The centre supplies everything for its residents, from shelter and food to clothing and education. It tries to arrange counselling and legal assistance for any and all who need it.
Importantly, says Denham, Mini Care tries to help abused mothers get back on their feet, so they can begin to establish a level of independence for themselves and their children.
To that effect, the centre has sent one of its mothers on a computer-training course with money from the TCC. Denham says this type of work does much to improve abused women’s self-esteem. ”Abused women often feel like they are nothing,” she says, and hopes the course will help make the young mother feel she can contribute to society.
The centre is constantly in need of food and toiletries; the daily necessities of any home or similar establishment — a bond, rates and taxes and lights and water — are all financial priorities.
The centre can’t afford full-time staff members, so all the mothers and older residents take turns doing the chores. The centre requires about R40 000 a month just to function, says Denham. ”And those are just the basics. There are no luxuries.”
The home regularly relies on volunteers to help raise funds.
But, despite struggling from month to month, Mini Care tries to operate like a family, says Denham. The kids follow a structured weekly routine that includes set homework times after school hours. But on weekends, the routine is relaxed. The centre has a trampoline, swimming pool and jungle-gym.
”We have our ups and downs like any family, but [we] try to give the children and adults a sense of belonging and the space to express themselves,” Denham says.
Another organisation that received R75 000 from the TCC is the Berea-Hillbrow Home of Hope, set up by Khanyisile Motsa in 2000. Home of Hope takes in street children and destitute people battling to survive in the inner city. It operates two flats in the CBD that house mainly young women, aged between 10 and 25.
Much like Denham, Motsa says the money received from the TCC was a ”miraculous windfall”.
The injection of cash went straight into paying Home of Hope’s electricity bills. The shelter had been without power for a number of months because its electricity account had gone into arrears. When the money was distributed in March this year, Home of Hope went from ”blackout” to ”in the black”. ”We were in the dark for a long time,” says Motsa. ”We switched lights on with that money.”
But the good that the money has done didn’t stop there. ”The money helped a lot,” she says. ”It paid for our levies and schooling for the children, bought food and toiletries, paid for skills-training and trained peer educators.”
When Motsa talks about skills-training, she refers particularly to one of the girls who is being sent on a nursing course with the charity cup funds. The money has helped train ”peer educators” who work with sexually exploited, abused and abandoned children living on the street.
Home of Hope does outreach work. Its on-site feeding schemes are a bid to reach street children the home is not able to take in. To keep residents motivated and occupied, the shelter trains them in beadwork and some of the charity cup money has gone towards buying supplies for beading workshops.
Motsa believes that teaching the children skills like beadwork ensures that they don’t relapse and return to street life. They will apply for additional funding this year. ”This money is helping change lives,” says Motsa. ”We would like to thank the fans who make the day possible, who phone in and pick their teams.”
