The Christmas Dinner, the Last Meeting of the Year and Biffo the Bear.

The Christmas Dinner 

President Amina Frense with her husband Ronnie Kasrils, Greta Schuler
and newly elected President Elect for 2013-14, Steve du Plessis

New Dawn Rotary Club has hosted a Rotary  Ambassadorial Scholar, Greta Schuler, from St Louis, Missouri in the USA   for the past year and the dinner was held  to raise funds for the Murwira Children’s Home in  Zimbabwe where  Greta has worked as a volunteer 6 times since 2008.

Greta has been in South Africa since January while studying for a Masters Degree in Forced Migration Economics at Wits and was  involved in New Dawn’s service projects which are  mainly aimed at helping children in need.

 

The orphanage Greta supports is  about 1 hour’s drive from Mutare and  houses around 30 children aged from newborn to around 17 years old.  It not  only provides a home and education  for homeless children in a loving and caring environment,  but  also fulfils  a vital function in the community.  The Home employs some 50 members of staff, all from the local community.

The Home has tried hard to be self sustaining.  It grows it own vegetables, for example, but has found it difficult given the massive recent drought in the area.   The funds raised at New Dawn’s Christmas Dinner will enable  the orphanage to install  an irrigation system to water their vegetable garden.   At the moment water has to be drawn and hauled from a long distance away.

Moved by the plight of these children, guests opened their hearts and their purses and the R30 000 raised at the dinner which was held at the School of Tourism & Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, exceeded all expectations.

Said  Amina Frense, President of Johannesburg New Dawn: “We have enjoyed hosting Greta this year and to have helped her raise money for such a worthy cause was an added bonus.  Events such as these showcase  our particular talents for generosity,  hospitality and  fellowship.”

    

When asked how Greta sees her future involvement in South Africa and the orphanage in particular, she said “Murwira feels like home to me and the children feel like my family.  In the same way New Dawn has also become a second home to me in Africa and its an involvement  I  would want for the rest of my life.”

Since 2002, retired church secretary Paula Leen has been feeding, clothing and educating orphans in Zimbabwe. The children come to her through Zimbabwe’s social services system, often arriving with nothing. Alone, frightened and hungry, they find a home with Aunty Paula, as she is known in the region. "I feel like they are my children in some ways," says Paula (who is from the state of Oregon, USA). "They are helpless, so I want to help." But Paula’s outreach has grown to include providing transportation for the critically ill, providing part-time jobs for more than 80 adults, and distributing food packages to thousands in the region who would otherwise starve. "I can’t keep people from being hungry, but I can keep them from starving to death," she says. A woman of exceptional energy and compassion, Paula Leen sees desperate need wherever she looks, and in her "Good Samaritan" style, she finds a way to ease the suffering. But her work depends completely on financial donations and on people who volunteer to help at the orphanage.

MCH Beginnings

Disease, drought and political unrest have changed Zimbabwe, in south-central Africa, from a thriving agricultural center into a land of hunger and orphans.

Because of AIDS, the average life span there is less than 40 years, and the number of orphans -- babies, toddlers, children and youth – is more than a million.

But in the midst of this misery there is an inviting refuge -- Murwira Children’s Home.

Begun in 2002 by a retired church secretary from Portland, Oregon, USA, Murwira Children’s Home gives orphaned or abandoned children love, stability, nutritious meals, clothing, education and spiritual development. In short, Murwira gives them a home.

Set on twenty acres, Murwira Children’s Home includes gardens and orchards, wells and a comfortable campus where children can grow and thrive.

This Week

This week's meeting is purely social and the last meeting of the year.  We will reconvene on the 16th January, 2013 when the School of Tourism and Hospitality reopens.

I will join the  Editor of The Beano who always used to write:

 Happy Christmas to All our Readers.

(signed)  The Editor.