ELEVEN Soroptimists from Southern England region went on a study tour of South Africa where they were the guests of seven clubs spread throughout the country.
One of the eleven, club member Pam Grosvenor gave a wonderful talk illustrated with slides on the wide range of projects they visited in seven different parts of South Africa.
“It’s one of the best things I’ve done as a Soroptimist,” Pamela told her audience. “We visited places tourists never normally visit and saw at first hand the work done by Soroptimists working with other organisations in a country with an enormous gulf between rich and poor.”
As well as visiting impressive projects involving Soroptimists the group fitted in some sightseeing during their two-week trip and a highlight was seeing the Apartheid Museum and also the Soweto home of the late President Mandela.
They began their tour at a Cape Town residential centre, St Joseph’s, for children with chronic illnesses requiring inpatient treatment.
In Durban they visited Hope Farm that is supported by the Durban Soroptimists. This project was started by a local businessman who discovered that there were children living at the bottom of his garden who were starving. He and his wife have fostered over a hundred children and adopted thirteen of them.
One of the projects supported by SI Grahamstown is a centre for the care of rape survivors, one of over fifty such centres in the province in which doctors, nurses, counsellors, police and advocates work together to care for the victims of rape but also to secure prosecutions of the perpetrators. The club provides clothing and amenities to improve the environment. The team deals with up to four rapes a day.
Mamelodi House, known to southern English Soroptimists via its links with the region established by former regional president Sue Pritt, was another stop on the tour and the mainly AIDS orphans housed there were given gifts by the visitors.
A highlight of the trip was an embroidery project called Mapula set up in 1991. Pretoria Soroptimists were involved at its inception and it now provides income for 150 women who sell the goods they create at a Pretoria craft market.
“President Obama is said to have a Mapula wall hanging in the White House,” said Pam.
The group also visited the Sithabele Child and Youth Care Centre that developed out of a project started by one of the club members who, just before she retired as a teacher, came across a young boy begging in the street. He was the breadwinner for his family and her concern was that he was missing out on his schooling. Initially the boy and his friends had lessons at her home and it was from that first step that Sithabele, which is now supported by 3M and local churches as well as SI Johannesburg, was established. It was from Sithabele that the group made contact with the SISE regional meeting via Skype!