Life Skills Update

We are very excited to share with you about the recent Holiday Club Living Hope held in early January. Over a fun-filled week during this past holiday, the Life Skill Educators in the various communities we serve used games, songs, and the Bible to help the children and teenagers understand the importance of having a strong foundation built on love, forgiveness and worth.

Each day, our Life Skill Educators focused on a different theme to help the children understand how God created them and that they have unique talents and abilities. The week was filled with so many wonderful moments. This one-week holiday club had 3241 kids & teens attending across 6 locations, including the Eastern Cape, and was an incredible success. On Friday, across the clubs, we had over 1000 kids!

Can you imagine impacting over 1000 children in a single day? In addition to that impressive feat, our Life Skills programme are teaching in primary schools and running character and puberty-focused small groups. These groups have been one of the most incredibly impactful events in our Life Skills programming. These groups have sparked so many great conversations. In one community, a father is raising his two girls by himself. For him to have a conversation with his young daughters about menstruation, their bodies, puberty and sex is a significant cultural challenge, as this would customarily be the task of a female family member. He was extremely grateful for this programme and shared his appreciation with our staff. We are also thrilled to be launching a brand new “DARE” programme for boys entering their tween and teen years to discuss issues of puberty and manhood, which you can pray for. We want to run many more and have had much interest from teens and tweens who want to join the group.

Check out the photos from Holiday Club and read more below for how you can help:

Many years ago, Living Hope launched a sponsorship fund specifically for the Life Skills Programme. We called this fund the “D.A.D” fund, which asked a donor to give a monthly suggested gift that was based on a “dollar a day” ($30 per month or around ZAR400). We loved the idea of faithful donors like you (metaphorically speaking) becoming a father figure or “Dad” to the kids in our programmes through your faithful giving. This type of monthly giving has carried the Life Skills programme very well for many years. However, in the last few years, we have seen a decline in funding for Life Skills and many “Dads” falling off the donor list. The drop in funding is at a critical point.

Even with these challenges of a decline in funding, we’re excited to report that in the last few months, so many exciting things have taken place; for example, We have a growing number of children and teens attending our Red Hill and Masiphumelele clubs. Did you know that all kids in our programme also get a filling and healthy meal at the programmes? We are meeting very real physical needs and spiritual needs! We cannot do, what we do, without people like you, and we are so happy to offer you the opportunity to partner with God and with Living Hope. Are you able to partner once-off or monthly to help support our new boys’ DARE group and our daily LSE programming through D.A.D? If so, you can donate here www.livinghope.co.za/donate and select one of the options beneath Life Skills or see our EFT details below.

Warmly,

Victor Thomas
Executive Director