We are literally reporting to you all from beneath a mountain of mail, gorgeous blankets and all your wonderful contributions! Things have been somewhat crazy on this end what with the exciting GSK Scarves for Schools project; the Skills Development
Read more…Having spent the evening in Newcastle, Wendy and I headed off bright and early to the city of Ladysmith. Ladysmith is in the Uthukela District of KwaZulu-Natal, and is 365 kilometres south of Johannesburg. Important industries in the area include fo
Read more…In July 2014 we visited two day-care centres – Vukuzenzele and Zenzele. I looked up the meaning of these names and there are a few variations, but my favourite one I have used as the headline for this report. Some of the others included:
“To make
Read more…This distribution took place with Wandi on 9th July.
Sanna is the wonderful woman who is responsible for running this daycare centre for the last 5 years. We first met her at a much earlier distribution in the Finetown area but it has taken us
Read more…On 23rd April this year, Wendy and I we collected Wandi to drive to Braam Fischer Informal Settlement in Soweto, to visit "Buhlebemfundo" Day Care, run by Ntombi.
Just the day before, along the very route we were to take, a pregnant woman had been
Read more…Our visit to the Sharp Kidz Day Care in Finetown reminded me of how Santa must feel when visiting the children of the world to drop off gifts!
We arrived at this very small school, on an unusually warm day in June, to find that our timing was out
Read more…Well, it may be the first week of Spring here in South Africa but last week we experienced bitterly cold temperatures, dropping below freezing at night and as a result, we have continued to distribute blankets.
I am thrilled to report that our stoc
Read more…There are always so many exciting things on the go at this end of KAS and in this report I share with you a variety of stories, starting with a trip to prison – again!
Last year, Abegail Ndaba, one of our board members, made contact with Vivian Ledw
Read more…As you can see from some of the photographs Thembalihle is a very dismal place and has sadly deteriorated since the previous Knit-a-Square visit in 2013. We met up with Maria, the main woman at Arise Pre-School, who explained that there are so many
Read more…In the last couple of weeks we have started to receive Mandela Day squares and what better opportunity to share with you some feedback on last year’s Mandela Day, and, what we have planned for this year!
Some of the beautiful squares we have recei
On Tuesday, 1 April Wandi and I popped into the Chiawelo Community Centre to collect the first batch of blankets stitched together by this group of ladies as part of the KAS community upliftment programme whereby the gogos are given R10 for each blan
Read more…They say that you should live in a house before you make any changes to it! Well, after having been in our KAS office for well over 6 months, we have a good idea of what is and is not working for us. Our biggest challenge is the limited space we ha
Read more…KAS South Africa enjoyed another successful Hobby X and it was so encouraging to have people we met at last year’s show bringing us the squares that they had knitted to this year’s show. We even had a lady drive all the way from Harrismith to Johann
Read more…In the middle of April we ventured into a new area to distribute blankets and were very excited as we set off to Finetown, an informal settlement south of Johannesburg! The Pastor who runs the Day Care Centre we were visiting met us on the side of t
Read more…On a freezing cold day at the beginning of June 2014, we headed off to Finetown once more … and, thanks to a large group of volunteers on that particular occasion, we were able to visit three schools.
Our first stop was Evergreen Day Care and Pre-S
Read more…Yesterday morning , Wendy and I travelled comfortably all the way to an informal settlement known as Mamela near the Vaal Dam, some 140 kilometres south of Johannesburg, with the KASvan loaded to capacity !
Our visit was to the Sakhisizwe Day Care
Read more…I cannot believe how the weeks are flying by and all that we have been up to lately. The weather is turning colder by the day, here … and it can be very chilly in the mornings and evenings. I am trying to get back into the swing of things after hav
Read more…Well, the activities of the last couple of weeks have been somewhat different to the run of the mill operation for KAS in South Africa. A great deal of our time has been taken up by our participation in a large exhibition in Johannesburg – Hobby X –
Read more…This week Knit-A-Square South Africa was thrilled to be able to facilitate the makeover of the Mmelisizwe Day Care Centre in Nancefield. This was made possible by generous funding received from 28 members of the United States KAS Forum as well as 6
Read more…It was wonderful to hear from all of you last week after posting my first report for June and I am pleased that you all enjoyed hearing what we get up to in South Africa.
Last Thursday, John delivered a mountain of post and although we had four volun
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