Amelia in South Africa 1

Amelia in South Africa

I left home on 30^th August ready to start my year in South Africa at Mitchell House Enrichment Centre. Many people in the village supported me by coming to my events and also making donations towards my fundraising, with many people supporting me by putting money in the hat at the Jubilee celebrations in the village hall in June. These donations helped me to raise £5,100 for the charity Project Trust.

I am here with 3 other Project Trust volunteers at Mitchell House with three of us working in the Enrichment Centre which provides an education to children with mental and physical disabilities. The other volunteer is in the Grade 00 class which is 4 and 5 years olds in mainstream education.

All the children in the Enrichment Centre are amazing, they all suffer from varying disabilities but they all are so positive. In the Enrichment Centre we help the children with the things that they struggle to do themselves and give them support where they need the extra support. I have only been at Mitchell House for just over 2 weeks (we spent a few days in Johannesburg with the Project Trust South Africa rep learning last minute things) and am still getting used to how everything works but I am hoping to do a piece each month for the magazine and next month will have more information about Mitchell House once we have settled in fully.

We have arrived at the end of term with the last day of term being on Thursday 20^th September. We then get a 2 week holiday where we are going to visit the Kruger National Park and then travel down to Swaziland and spend 4 days at another Project Trust project there. We will then return to Polokwane for a few days before the start of the new term on 7^th October.

South Africa is an incredible country, all the people that we have met both in and outside of working at Mitchell House have been incredibly welcoming. The children in the main stream school have also been really welcoming and on our first few days at aftercare (the school day is 7.30 to 12.30 and then we spend from 1.30 to 5.00 at aftercare) the children drew us lots of pictures which we have stuck on the wall of our flat in a school hostel elsewhere in Polokwane. The weather has been very irregular, some days bitterly cold and others such as today incredibly hot. Today it is about 30^oC and we have been told from now on it is just going to get hotter.

Hopefully by next month I will have sorted out getting my photos onto the computer and I will be able to share some photos with you.

Thank you again to anybody who donated towards my fundraising, Amelia Sykes