be the change: under 2000 santa shoeboxes needed

hey readers of this

someone forwarded me an email not telling me the nigerian governtment or bill gates are about to send me a lot of money so i thort i’d pay attention – there is this site that puts together presents for needy kids in the form of santa shoeboxes – they have a target of 31552 kids this year and are currently over the 29000 mark and so really just need a few people to push them over – check out the site – get involved if you will – one piece of meat less on your Christmas dinner table might mean a changed life or moment for someone else

visit the site

The project started in Cape Town in 2006 spearheaded by the founder of Kidz2Kidz, Dee Boehner. In 2007 Irene’ Pieters was appointed national co-ordinator and in 2008 the Santa Shoebox Project joined forces with a similar organization from Somerset West.

Since then, the project has grown in leaps and bounds and the numbers have grown from 180 Santa Shoeboxes in 2006, to 2000 boxes in 2007, 8000 in 2008 to 16000 in 2009, exceeding the target by 30% – 50% year on year. In 2009 the Santa Shoebox Project reached into all corners of South Africa and in 2010 also into Namibia and Botswana. Each country supporting their own children.

The management is run entirely by volunteers. Kind hearted people who give their time, effort and expertise without being remunerated for it. Satellite projects have sprung up not only in the big cities but include many small country towns as well. All run by volunteers taking the responsibility of acting as co-ordinators for their areas.

can you make curveball juice?

so sunday nite i made a space for testimonies for people to share what God has been doing in their lives…

the second person who got up was a man named P (well not really, but let’s call him that for now) who i know pretty well from being around church and from having an amazing story of being homeless and God and the church bringing transformation in his life and so now he and often he and his wife gather with us for churching on sundays and he comes fairly often to enGAGE in the evenings

so he got up and shared a hectic testimony about his life over the last few years and his story of where he came from and how there was a guy threatening to rape his wife and this week he did and how P was able to deal with his anger and help get the guy caught by the police and a bunch of other stuff…

then this morning i find out in our staff meeting that there is actually another side of the story and that there have been some people in town walking a long (a few years) journey with him and that he is often lazy and doesn’t take the work he is offered (ranging from work in vineyards to leatherwork etc etc) and that at times he beats his wife and his kids and that the reason his kids were removed from him (part of the story last nite) was actually because of that and they don’t want anything to do with him – him and his wife were given a flat for 6 months or more and just completely didn’t take care of it and he hasn’t done a lot of the work he has been offered (in terms of being able to stay there) and so suddenly the story sounds a whole lot completely different

which is hard. and sucks. a lot.

tbV and i went a long way to help out a young suicidal homeless guy with a huge story a month or so ago and ended up buying him food and sponsoring him bus fare back home to his sister in mosselbay and waking up early in the morning to fetch him from the place we organised for him to sleep and he managed to call me in the morning when he needed a lift but never managed to make the call we asked him to make once he made it safely back to his sister and the number he gave us for his sister we never managed to get through on after numerous attempts

and it just makes it all very difficult to help – or even want to help – the next guy

but you have to. at least i think you do. or at the very least continue to take time to listen and hear the story and see if it is possible to help. we definitely can’t help everyone. but at the same time we definitely can’t not help anyone. and as i always say i would rather ultimately get ripped off for R20 or R200 bucks (especially with a good story – reward for creative story-telling i don’t mind paying for altho would help if we knew beforehand it was in the genre of fiction) than keep the money and risk not helping someone in serious need who does need the money (and i generally assume someone is probly going to spend the R20 or R200 better than i would anyways)

so curveball-ade it is…