Mercy House
Tholuthando
Cindy Duma started Tholuthando Children’s Home in September 2005. Tholuthando in Zulu means “seek out and find love here”. The home started out with 3 orphan children and now supports 32 children.
This home is in the Kwa Nyuswa area near Hillcrest in KwaZulu Natal.
The house in which the children stay consists out of four rooms – a sitting room, a kitchen and two bedrooms. The 32 children sleep on bunker beds in the two rooms. Because of space restrictions toilet facilities are outside. They receive their meals outdoors, even in rainy weather.
As part of our project we support them on a monthly basis with food, toiletries and cleaning products. We have also started building projects to improve the living conditions.
Victoria Hlope's House
Electricity and water has become the norm for us. We get frustrated if one of the two is not available. When we visited Victoria Hlope's one bedroom "house", we realized that running water, electricity and bathroom facilities are luxuries.
Victoria Hlophe is a widow with three children whose husband died in a truck accident. In 2006 she stayed with her parents and started to build a one room house for herself. Unfortunately she ran out of money and couldn’t finish it.
As a project we completed the building for her in 2007 and she and her daughter moved in, this became their kitchen and bedroom. She didn’t have any other support and we decided to help her and her children to extend this one room to a four room house. In 2008 the building of the open plan kitchen-lounge, bathroom and a room for the two boys started.
With this project we want to reach out to people like Victoria and her children to help them to increase their standard of living. One main priority is to complete the half-build room in her house. Any help would be appreciated.
