Miracles can happen!

Little Stophile has been adopted!


When he started therapy he was just over two years of age and the care workers had their hands full with him. He was labeled aggressive, disruptive, difficult to manage.


Found in a deserted park at four months (in winter time), was not a good start for any baby. He was under nourished and weak for the first few weeks. As soon as he started to gain weight, he was demanding and would cry without stopping for hours. His development in general was slow and he was referred to Thusanani when he was just under two years of age with a possible diagnosis of being "mildly retarded".


In therapy he thrived. He lapped up the attention, he was fascinated by all the colourful toys, the crayons, the luxury of toys that made sounds. Gradually he became more manageable, less of a problem until the final assessment when he was found FIT FOR ADOPTION. The magic works that make us all sit up and smile.

....and then on Thursday his new Forever Family came to pick him up.

I'll miss him, the naughty little rascal, but I am so happy that he has finally gone HOME. Go well little Stophile, you'll alway have a place in my heart.

Toy-Toy phone call

Jenny from Toy-Toy (www.toy-toy.co.za) phoned me on Friday with excellent news. They have been contacted by Crux Integration Services who wants to spend R1200,00 on toys for Children who are orphaned.

What a lovely way to contribute to our communities. Helping those most vulnerable and ensuring they have a splendid Christmas and toys that will last them into the New Year.

I was able to choose the toys. Oh what fun I had. There were so many durable and practical toys in their educational toy section. I kept on going back to my list of Children and what they needed and each time i found just the right toy. All too soon the money was spent . . . . .it is always like that with so many children to choose for.

This has inspired me immensely. What if we all went to our favourite Toy Shop and said we wanted to donate to Thusanani? What if we bought a gift for our kids this Christmas and then ask the shop to donate another similar one to Thusanani? That way ALL the little ones growing up in an Orphanage will have a Christmas they will never forget.

A BIG THANKS TO CRUX INTEGRATION SERVICES!!!

Goodbye Becky

Sadly, we have received the resignation of one of our senior therapists, Rebecca Wang. We all know her as Becky, or even as Bex as we sometimes call her. She will be leaving us at the end of 2009 to join a private practice.

She will be sorely missed! Becky organized our training and was also the main drive behind the development of the Training Manuals, the training Protocol and the organisation of our Training store. At Thusanani Bex WAS Training. She organized it, did it and she improved it as she went along. She has built a strong relationship with leaders in the community who relied on her to supply the training for the ladies starting up Day Care Centres in the informal settlements and in the poorly resourced communities in and around Johannesburg. During 2009 there was a strong focus on Ekhuruleni and by the time she leaves us she would have trained more than 80 ladies involved in taking care of children in those communities.

Her passion for training and for improving the lives of the Orphaned and Vulnerable Children has also lead her to develop the training Thusanani gives to the Care Givers working in Children's Homes. In short here at Thusanani referred to as "HOMES TRAINING", Becky has been refining that course and has ensured that all the Thusanani therapists are skilled at delivering this training and ensuring that Care Givers daily looking after children who has to grow up in a Children's Home will receive the daily developmental stimulation they need to grow up to be contributing members of our society.

Becky is also mentor to the more junior therapists here at Thusanani. she guides, she teaches, she supports and most of all she leads by example. To Heleen as Manager of the Services she has been a sound board for ideas, a moral support and very often the stand in manager.

OH BOY WE WILL MISS HER!

Thank you Bex for all the years of slogging away and helping us make a difference!

NEW ROOMS! ZOO OUTING!, so much on the plate

So much on our plates at the moment. Hard to keep up.

• We are busy with full on training of Care Givers working in Children's Homes.
• We are planning the renovations of the new treatment rooms and offices.
• We are getting ready for the Annual Zoo party.

All of this while the little mundane day to day things have not disappeared:

• Assessment of babies up for adoption. (yeah some will be with their new families before 2010!!!)
• Treatment for those who are showing signs of developmental delay.
• Monthly outings for children living in a Children's Home to The Glen Shopping Centre.
• Distribution of donated toys and clothing.
• Writing the Blog......

Be the way. . . . THANKS to ALL who are donating to the Zoo Party. It is happening on the 21st of November and is going to be loads of fun for the 108 kids that are attending.

The impact of the slowing down of South Africa’s economy.

Even a Non Profit Organisation like Thusanani is affected by the economic slowdown. The Thusanani Childrens Foundation had high hopes for 2009. Now with the end of 2009 coming closer we are faced with the reality that we will not be able to make all those dreams come true.

We were unable to secure funding to open up a branch in Cape Town. It would be most unwise of us to appoint the two keen Occupational Therapists waiting in the wings if we cannot sustain the service. We’ve done all the research and we have a number of Children’s Homes eager to make use of the service because they realize how the babies in their care need the stimulation. However in our line of business the need for the service is not the only factor so consider when looking at sustainability.

We are thankful that with the partnership of the Big Shoes Foundation we are able to render a service in Durban. Assessing babies that are up for adoption and giving therapy to those who need extra stimulation before they can be adopted, is our core focus at the branch.

Funding for a once off outreach to Port Elizabeth to do training for sixty people had to be shelved. The plan was to get a local business to sponsor the training of thirty Care Workers, twenty Volunteers and ten professionals. The training was planned to cover the topics of the importance of play, the use of toys and the identification of babies that need professional intervention. We had hoped that this training would start the process of building capacity in the area, making a significant impact on the outcomes for babies in Children’s Homes in Port Elizabeth and surrounding area. Unfortunately we could not raise the twenty thousand Rand needed for this project.

Perhaps even more tragic is that we have lost funding from the Cycle for Kids Foundation who has consolidated their focus areas and we now no longer fit their criteria. The Turffontein Charity Mile Horserace has also made changes in their structuring which literally “leaves us out of the race” this year. This affects our current service delivery in Johannesburg and renders us unable to employ the valuable service of a Speech and Language Therapist for 2010. Since all children growing up in Children’s Homes have delayed language development this is a terrible blow and loss to the children’s normal development.

We’ve had a significant drop in donation of educational toys (new and pre-loved), especially the toys in higher price brackets that are durable and from brands with proven durability. We are thankful for those organizations that area indicating that they will again have drive for toys over the coming Christmas period. This will help us to stock up for redistribution to Children’s Homes where it is needed.

For the past seven years our training has been free and this past year was no exception. The cost of providing the lunches and having the manuals for the training printed and bound, plus the expense of the toy making kits we provide at the training has escalated dramatically. Coupled with the fact that we ran 45% more courses than in 2008, this is reflected in our training expense being higher by a projected 30% for 2009. The demand for training in 2010 is even higher and it is likely that we will not be able to render this training free of charge.

Outings to the Glen Shopping Centre have been as regular as we could arrange. It is however a sad fact that most Children’s Homes do not have transport and those that have also have to budget carefully around their transport budgets. On the positive side the outings have been as much a pleasure as always with huge benefit to the children who is treated like royalty at the Wimpy, the Magic Toy Company and welcomed by shops all through the Mall.

Despite the many obstacles facing us we remain focused and of the opinion that we are privileged to work with the children most vulnerable in our society. We continue to value the partnerships we have with our funders and volunteers and we keep on striving to make a difference!

NEW PREMISES FOR THUSANANI?

GREAT NEWS.

Because we have grown so much and had to add on as we grew, we are now scattered over three therapy rooms, three store rooms and three offices.

This makes it difficult to deliver seamless services. The present scenario has it that a Children's Home will announce their arrival with Jacky, sitting in admin office who then has to phone the the therapist to come round to fetch the kiddies and take them to one of the three therapy rooms. Often the treatment will entail traipsing round to another treatment area midway through the session before returning the kiddies back to reception to book the next appointment. When we have adoption clinic this can become quite a circus with five Care Givers from different Homes slugging the baby seats and nappy bags around and the therapist carrying the bunch of keys to lock unlock (this is middle of Jozi remember)! a sigh to behold indeed, but not conducive to seamless service delivery.

The solution lies in the "Proposed New Premises" we have found in the building. Still close to the Big Shoes Foundation and Active Learning Libraries on the third floor, WAY BIGGER and WAY better for service delivery.

In the new Proposed Premises there are interconnected office space for therapsits, a waiting room for Care Givers, a decent size training room, ample toileting facilities with space for the baby changing station, a meeting room and JUST ONE SET OF KEYS.

There are only two snags:
The increase in rent and the cost of renovating the new rooms!

Our rent will be jumping to a whopping Seven Thousand Rand a month. Still not a large amount in terms of what corporates pay for rental space, but way out of our league. We seriously need funding that are ongoing and sustained before we can commit to make the move.

Hurdle number two is more of a short term need. We need experts in the Building Industry to come on board and give advice. We've had all our paint donated by Medal Paints through Cashbuild and we are most grateful for that. But we are a long way away from knowing what to do to get the three (connected) therapy rooms ready for therapy.

Any one out there with knowledge willing to come on board? any company willing to chip in with the much needed carpentry, plumbing, electrical upgrading and flooring?
Come on, make us your Project for your Social Responsibility Program. It would make such a difference in the lives of the kiddies that come for therapy.

Communication breakdown causes havoc

Thusanani has been "out of touch" for more than three weeks now! No land line, no Internet and then the Cell phone also conked in and had to be repaired. Have you ever heard of such bad luck?

We apologize if you are one of the many people who tried in vain to get through to us. We reported our faulty lines on a daily basis, had promises on an almost daily basis of how it would be fixed by "end of day", only to arrive the next day and find we still are 'out of touch".

In desperation we are now planning to change our provider and go with a company that have a proven history of being there for their client. As soon as we are connected you'll hear about that.

In the meantime PLEASE bear with us. The only contact number is the personal cell phone of Heleen Johnson, our manager: 072 9388838

Do It Day

Blue Moon changed our lives once more today!

We are planning to move into new premises that still have to be renovated. These premises have not been used for years and were absolutely filthy. Thusanani knew they wanted to / had to clean it before we could even estimate where we had to renovate.

And that’s where the e-mail from Blue Moon got us excited.

Blue Moon’s Debbie wanted to know if we know of a place where they could help out by cleaning or weeding for Do It Day, 18 September 2009.

Boy, did we know of a NPO that needed them!

And that is how it came about that we now have clean premises where we can invite potential funders to. We can show the potential renovators the premises and without climbing over rubble and dead birds get them to give advice on changes we need to make.

And the staff from Blue Moon knows where every muscle is that is used in cleaning. They will ache tomorrow while we dream of our new premises tonight.

To all you guys who scrubbed and mobbed, vacuumed and washed: THANKS FOR DOING IT!

Collaborataion and Partnerships

Thusanani is in the process of developing new partnerships and finding other NPO's (Non Profit Organisations) to work alongside. We have always had a good and mutually rewarding relationship with the Big Shoes Foundation as well as with the various Children's Homes we work at and deliver services to.

Through the training we provide to care givers we have become an important resource to the Sunlight Safe House Project run by Childline Gauteng. With other NPO's getting to know us, like "The Lonely Road Foundation", we might find ourselves more and more expanding through the different partnerships.

Big news, hot off the manager's desk is the plan to develop a specific training program for persons wanting to become volunteers in a stimulation program at Childrens' Homes. We have identified that Volunteers doing regular volunteering has a need and desire to use play effectively and to make a positive impact on the development of the children they serve. It is forseen that this would be a two week full time training course with practical sessions to develop knowledge and skill. There would be a cost to the course to enable Thusanani to recover the cost of admin, basic charts, manuals and other running costs. Details still have to be finalized and Bridget, one of our senior Occupational Therapists, is working hard to get the documentation ready for presentation to the team.

In the Pipeline

Thusanani Johannesburg is growing at a fast rate. So fast we are beginning to split at the seams!

We have five therapists squashed into one office trying to schedule not just their time at the computers, but also having to schedule their times at the desks they are sharing. It is beginning to border on the ridiculous and bizarre.

At the therapy end of matters it is not any less hectic. We have three therapy rooms to share and between running the assessments of the babies in one and the treatment of groups of toddlers in the other two there is little margin for error. Having no waiting room for the care givers ( they sit in the passage leading to reception desk) and only one toilet makes for interesting mornings, especially on a Tuesday.

Don't get us wrong. We are grateful for what we have and we are happy to give the service. We are overjoyed at our results. But we need more space here in Johannesburg. It is time to start looking out for a "wing of our own" here in the CMI building. The one challenge around that would be the cost of the refurbishment of that "wing".

Oh dear, I can feel a serious fundraising campaign coming on........

Training for PE?

We are inundated with requests for training in the PE area. This is after my visit there in July and the questionnaire I sent to the Children's Homes in and around PE. It would seem that this area of South Africa is under resourced as far as opportunities are concerned as well as being a long distance from areas with expertise.

Thusanani would dearly like to help by supplying a once off training course for

• Care Givers working with Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC)
• Volunteers interested in becoming involved in the field
• Professionals interested in upskilling their expertise. This would include the professionals like Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Physio Therapists and ECD Educators.

Anybody who can help? We have estimated that it would cost us R20,000 to train 60 people: that would be 30 Care Givers, 20 Volunteers and 10 Professionals.

But......if we could train such a core group of people in PE. . . . .there will be a major impact on service delivery and Developmental Delay in the group of OVC can be prevented to a large extent.

I am holding thumbs. So is PE.

Have a great long weekend!

Heleen

OTASA Congress 2009

Heleen did a presentation on "Thusanani and CSI funding" at the recent OTASA congress in July 2009. (OTASA stands for Occupational Therapy Association of South Africa). The presentation was well recieved and a number of professionals asked for more information on Thusanani.

Thusanani is thankful to Blue Moon who helped Heleen with her presentation as part of their ongoing involvement with Thusanani. The Glen shopping Centre who paid for the airfare to Port Elizabeth and QZCreative who footed the bill for accommodation and meals also warrant mentioning here. Support like this is what makes it possible for Thusanani to make the difference in the lives of vulnerable and orphaned children.

While in PE Heleen visited a number of local Children's Homes (Orphanages) and was impressed by their eagerness to learn more about the courses we run for Care givers of Children living in a Children's Home. We'll keep in touch and discuss how we can assist them with training.

Blue Moon

Thusanani and Blue Moon (www.bluemoon.co.za) has formed a friendship and this has resulted in some major positive changes here at Thusanani. As a company involved in communication they have taken it on themselves to make our life easier. They have done scanning and printing for us, helping us to produce our puzzle making for the training workshops. This allowed us to have more time available to spend on therapy and developing the training. They have also presented us with a map of Johannesburg showing all the areas. This will be used to flag our present involvement in the communities and the areas we are hoping to reach.

This company has some amazing talent. We sat down with them last week and they helped us to set up clear processes to follow when doing and receiving referrals from other NGO's.

What an inspiring way to invest in the community. Thanks to Michelle and her dedicated team!

Expansion

With our training becoming more and more known and demand rising, we were in need of a bigger store room area. In part this also happened because the therapists ( five of us) were all squashed into one office and we needed the current store room for office space. The long and the short of it is that we now have a new store room and we need to have shelves put up and cupboards fitted.

We are hoping that one of you could recommend a company? Perhaps even one that could use us to fulfill their Corporate Social Responsibility!

Please phone us on 011 484 3128 and ask to speak to Heleen.

Training

We are currently doing training with the care givers at The Lambano Baby Sanctuary (Germiston) and with a group of Early Childhood Educators from Ekhuruleni. The group from Ekhuruleni is finishing their course this coming Wednesday and it is going to be a day filled with fun and learning: they will be shown how to make Toys from Waste . . . and they will be given the opportunity to make toys to take home. We will also be handing over a toy-making kitt to each participant to set them on the road to re-cycle and re-use waste materials AND make an impact on the children in their care.

It has been a while

Don't you just hate it when this happens. . . .you suddenly realise that you have been so busy that you did not get round to catch up with friends! SO SORRY. The year started with such a bang that it slipped my mind that I love to Blog and Brag. On the website you've seen the link to the newsletter and most of you get our newsletter anyway so I can be forgiven.

We have been full steam ahead. . . . going places and doing therapy and assessments like there is no tomorrow. All the new staff are by now settled in and running their programs with ease. Rebecca (Becky) is doing our training and that has just been going remarkably well. Word of mouth has proved to be the best advertisement and the training for the community workers are just about fully booked for the year ahead! And the requests keep on coming in! Well done Becks.

We are also getting requests from Occupational Therapists, other NGO's and individuals to start taking Thusanani nationally. For that we need LOTS more funding and a donor base with long term commitment. More about that later.



Right now we want to appeal to those of you close by in Jo-burg to come help us with colouring in some pictures. We use photostated pics from a colouring in book to teach the care workers how to make a puzzle. We like to give them a ready made example to take home . . . .and that is why we need to make about 240! See why we need YOU to come and help? We supply the pictures and the kokis, you do the colouring in. Contact me on 072 9388838 to arrange.

Students give generously

The students of the Vaal University of Technology, Visual Arts and Design made a generous donation to Thusanani Children's Foundation today. The student designed and made soft toys as part of their work assignments and Heleen received those today.

These lovely designer toys will be distributed to Children's Homes where they will brighten up the lives of the children.

Thanks students. We look forward to more such projects in the future.

New intake

We went out to a Children's home this morning to re-start our regular service of therapy there. How nice to see some of the old faces from last year and how wonderful to hear that some of the babies were placed with their Forever Families and are doing well. So sad however, to see the "new intakes" of the festive season. Babies abandoned while the world were out shopping and spreading goodwill.

"High there Little Ones, we will help to make you feel welcome and give you therapy to reach your milestones . . . . and we'll teach your caregivers how to make sure you have a head start in life."

New Year, New energy

The year 2009 has arrived and we have SO MANY ideas and SUCH ENERGY to make it happen!

To start off a BIG thanks again to Think Toys for sending us another donation during this past week. Awesome stuff. And in good time, since we sill be making up a parcel to go to a underresourced after school care facility in Ladismith. This parcel will be delivered by Airbridge - read about them on http://www.airbridge.org.za

Secondly a hearty welcome to our new staff member: Heather, Bridget and Basheera. Good to have you on board.