Our ongoing impact
Presently Beautiful Gate supports 60 Community Guardians in Philippi and Crossroads. We also continue to grow by providing parent and community guardian training to over 300 parents every year with many destitute families receiving food parcels, counselling and other support. After School Clubs provide homework, cultural activities and sports to 200 children in partnership with Vukani, Bongolwethu and Zanemfundo Primary Schools. The centre also provides HIV treatment to 540 children and teens in partnership with the Department of Health at Crossroads 2 CHC in Old Crossroads. Over 6000 visitors come through the Youth Resource Centre every year and plans are underway to run career guidance for four High Schools in 2015 - New Eisleben, Phakama, Phandolwazi and Vuyiseka High Schools. With all this, we are excited and humbled by the strength we see in local initiatives and plan to continue to invest in partnerships with children, parents and community based structures and organisations throughout 2015. Thank you for your ongoing support, Vaughan Stannard Executive Director
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We are pleased to share our 2013-14 Annual Report with you, which highlights our work over the past financial year. Please read it online here. Thanks to all who have been part of Christmas parties and events for our children. What wonderful smiles! Visit our Facebook page for all the photos.
My name is Funelakhe Duze and I live in Lower Crossroads. I am currently doing my first year B.Com Accounting studies at UCT, thanks to the help I received from Beautiful Gate's Youth Resource Centre. I first started coming to the Beautiful Gate Resource Centre during my grade 11 year at Phandulwazi High School. In the beginning, I mostly came to do my school assignments. Having not had much exposure to computers and how to find all the information I needed for my assignments, it was such a blessing to have access to the internet and friendly people to help me learn how to use the computer to find what I needed! But the support didn't end there. Soon I was faced with the stress of having to leave high school and not knowing what career to focus on or how to even find out what I could do. Fortunately, I was invited to a Career Exhibition hosted by Beautiful Gate for all the community members. This helped me find the information I needed and later one of the staff at Beautiful Gate helped me to apply to tertiary institutions and for a bursary as well. Some months later, UCT accepted me to study! Beautiful Gate has supported Crossroads Children’s HIV clinic as part of their community outreach since 2004. Children who were started on ARV’s in those early days have now grown up and face the challenge of negotiating their teenage years successfully. We all know how tough it is being a teenager but it is even tougher if you are growing up with HIV. This is why the focus for Beautiful Gate this year has been to help Crossroads develop a more adolescent friendly HIV service.
On Saturday, 25th October we held our Annual Celebration and celebrated our 20th birthday with our community and friends. Thank you to each one of you that has been part of our journey so far. We are excited about what God has in store for the next 20th years. Have a look at our photo album on Facebook.
Many of us think that only “grown-ups” can do things of great significance. But we forget the young boy David, slayer of Goliath, and the child Samuel, who heard God’s voice or the youngster who gave up his fish and bread so that Jesus could feed 5000 adults.
God has a plan for each new born and each young child. Sadly, many of our nation’s children are abused or neglected, left without anyone to nurture or protect them. Thoughts of doing “great things” are far from their minds. Yet Psalms says that “You (O lord ) have taught the little children to praise you perfectly. May their example shame and silence your enemies.” Our children are not only our future, they are our today. As we speak words of encouragement and hope, of love and life into them, I am convinced that ALL children, rich or poor, all around the world, can do great things! We are the child's protector
“There can be no keener revelation of society’s soul than the way it treats it’s children” Nelson Mandela As I write this the South Africa Human Rights Commission is poised to investigate the alleged failure by government to implement the National Child Protection Register. Highly regarded by many child protection advocates, this register is a requirement stipulated in our much-applauded Children’s Act and is aimed at helping keep children safe from physical and sexual abuse and the potential abusers. Four years later...still no protection offered. Perhaps this latest set-back in legislation is a poignant reminder that legal acts, frameworks and registers do not protect children: we do. You and I. The man on the street, the neighbour, friend, granny, aunt, uncle and brother. We are called to stand up to violence and abuse. Not because we are legislated to, but because it’s right. “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me” Jesus, Matt 25 v40 This week the Children’s Institute (www.ci.org.za) released their annual snap-shot of the state of children in South Africa - Child Gauge 2013. The sad summary: “South Africa is not a good place for children”.
With inequality between rich and poor growing steadily, our children will face dire consequences in the future. Presently 58% of children under 9 years live below the poverty line with an adult earning less than R604 (55 Euro) /month. Of the 18,5 million children in the country, 20% are orphaned, 24% are not living with their parents and 740 000 are living in child-headed homes. Right now, Beautiful Gate is expanding our community child care and family preservation services into 2014 to reach more children in these situations. amazingly, half of all our parents attending our parental training are already caring for children not their own. They have informally taken responsibility for children in their street or community needing a safe home. They are the hero’s! But they need help. We are excited to be able to partner with them and we hope that together, we can make South Africa safe for children! Thank you for joining with us to do just that! |
Crossroads ChildWelcome to a window into the lives and issues facing children in the Crossroads community on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Most of these stories centre around the children and families we work with at Beautiful Gate South Africa, a Christian non-profit organisation whose mission is to show God's love as we care for and protect children, empower and preserve families and mobilise our community to do the same. Archives
February 2021
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