Hi Everyone

It is with a grateful heart that I write this last newsletter for 2018. What an exceptional year it has been! Coming to the end of 2018, I want to share some of the highlights with you.

We celebrated our 10^th birthday on Saturday, 3 November 2018 in Touwsranten. The day was wonderful. All the childrenand families who attended, enjoyed the fun and games. They especially loved seeing and interacting with the actress Mimi Mahlasela, known for her role of Aggie Ngwenya in the soapie 7de Laan, who was the guest of honour.

We had a very successful golf day and we raised R168 000!! A very big thanks to all the golfers and sponsors who made this day a huge and wonderful success. As always we thank our board members who helped and supported this effort. Also a huge thank you to Peter Leppan. Without his help and support, the golf day would not have happened.

We have also received numerous other donations from individuals and groups such as the Open Gardens Group of Hoekwil. We want to thank every person who contributed to our important work.

During 2018 we reached 89 families with the parenting programmes. There are countless success stories of families communicating and connecting better with each other. To view some of these successes, please click on the link below.

http://www.sevenpasses.org.za/news-media/videos/

We will start with our third and last community survey at the end of January 2019.

The number of high school learners who attend our after-care have risen. We are very grateful that so many young people attend the programme and make use of the computer centre.

We are also continuing with the reading programme and thanks to the help and commitment of the reading volunteers we are helping specific children.

We offered the following training opportunities to staff and facilitators during 2018:

Sinovuyo Kids – Clowns without Borders

First Aid and Health and Safety – 4 Front Consultants

Persona Dolls – Kim Andreoli

Men Care – Sonke

Trauma Counselling – Karen Ritchie & Rasada Goldblatt

Personal Development – Life Line

Move-It – Eda Greenway – Regional coordinator – Move-It Moving Matters

Life Skills – Semona Diener & Kim Andreoli

The well-known artist and photographer, Chris Daly made a promotional video for the organisation. Please watch this beautiful video which explains without words what we are all about.

We had an exceptional Christmas party and around 300 children from the rural area received presents, individualised certificates and snacks. Thank you to Jenny and Rebecca for the buying and wrapping of the presents. Thank you to all the sponsors who contributed towards presents.

We also thank Linda Tacke for ALL the cupcakes and Cecile from Indwe who sponsored and printed the certificates.

Thank you for your involvement, care and love that we have received during this year. Without you Seven Passes would not be able to deliver the services we do.

Our offices will close on 14 December 2018 and reopen again on 7 January 2018. We will deliver an exciting holiday programme from 13 December – 4 January.

I hope that this Christmas time will be special for every one of you. May you experience love, peace, joy and lots of quality time with family and friends.

Warm regards

Wilmi and the Seven Passes Team