Adopt a School

The concept of making school a better place than home is an incredibly easy thing to do. With this there will be a natural migration to school with attendance increasing and more children realizing their short term dreams and finishing Grade 1. Find out more

Friday Flik

For most of us, a trip to the local mall enables us to watch the latest movie on circuit, or take a trip to the DVD store. For others, most have never been to a movie house or seen a movie. Find out more

Enduro Africa

Enduro Africa is a unique and challenging motorcycle adventure in aid of 4 amazing causes – UNICEF, Sentebale – The Princes’ Fund for Lesotho, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and Touch Africa. Find out more

Ride 4 Change

The Touch Africa Ride 4 Change adventure challenge is a registered corporate fund raising event which aims to change the lives of some of the most underprivileged children in the impoverished Wild Coast area. Find out more

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THANK YOU LETTER TO ENDURO AFRICA PARTICIPANTS 2011 - RIDE 1

2011-11-02

Hello everyone

Firstly, THANK YOU all for the wonderful contribution you have made to Touch Africa and the lives of hundreds of children at the two schools in the Transkei.

It was a huge pleasure to meet you all on your rest days at Kob Inn and Mazeppa Bay respectively. Your dedication to raising the money to participate in Enduro Africa which benefits our charity Touch Africa is truly touching and greatly appreciated.

I hope you all enjoyed your time in South Africa and will return one day either to ride again or maybe even bring your families out on holiday, there is so much more to see!!

To those of you who had a couple of bumps and bruises (and some more serious) injuries, I trust that you are all now healed or at least on the way to a full recovery and back to your normal lives. I am sure that this experience changed you all and that watching the video footage and tons of pictures taken will mean that we stay in your memories for years to come.

RIDE ONE 2011

The rest day was spent at the Mcgawezulu School (near Kob Inn) to help finish the work in the Grade R classroom and the rehabilitation of school desks and chairs. Your enthusiasm on the day was greatly appreciated by all and especially the children, who had great fun (albeit in the scorching heat) playing footie with some of the guys. The footballs used have been donated to the school by Touch Africa.

The meal provided was enjoyed by all, thanks to all the barbeque workers, who ensured that more than 150 meals were served on the day. Touch Africa has secured funding through KFC for a twelve month period, to supply this school with food to be able to provide a decent cooked meal to the children every day. This will go a long way to ensure that they are able to concentrate on their lessons and most importantly it will ensure that children come to school. This is truly making our motto “making school a better place” come to life. We will continue to assist this school for years to come, based on continuous funding in order to improve their conditions even further. The Principal has been issued with a laptop and 3g connection through Touch Africa in order to provide us with regular reports in order to manage the processes and importantly to enable us to feed back to our various sponsors. It will also allow the children at the school to have limited internet access for the purposes of researching for projects.

Current projects that need assistance at Mcgawezulu School include:

  • Building of one additional classroom
  • Proper sports facilities including a soccer pitch and netball court
  • Structure for shade where children can play and eat their lunch
  • Building for a kitchen facility
  • Building of facility to house library and computer room
  • Computers and printer (networked)
  • Internet connectivity
  • Software packages
  • Educational DVD’s
  • Photocopy machine

The budgets for this wish list are as follows (figures reflect pound amount):

One 60 sqm classroom = 4166
One 40 sqm kitchen = 3245
One 60 sqm classroom for library and computer room = 4166
Grading of sports facility = 3000
Grassing, marking and soccer nets = 1850
Building netball court = 4500
Educational DVDs = 300
Software packages = 500
Computers = 1200
Internet connectivity = 300
Photocopy machine = 200
Kitchen equipment = 1300
Shade structure = 500
Books for library = 2000
Photocopy machine = 200

If you are interested in supporting any of these projects either in full or in part, please contact me on elise@touchafrica.info.

As indicated to you a minimum of 65% of the monies are used directly in project cost with the balance of 35% being used to fund the running of the organisation.

Many riders from previous years are now our strongest ambassadors and I really hope that some of you will follow in their footsteps.

Some of those riders have put us in contact with schools in the UK, who have now adopted South African schools. Our recent registration as a UK charity, School Aid4Africa which is both Gift Aid and Virgin Giving registered is run by an ex Enduro Africa rider, Richard Cook, who is doing a wonderful job of spreading the word about the charity and ensuring that our funding applications are timeously processed. If you would like to get in touch with Richard to discuss donations his email address is richard@arnel.co.uk.

Once again thank you all for your generosity. To those of you who have indicated that you would like to continue receiving information, thank you for your contact details, I am already communicating with some of you for continued assistance and hope to chat to all of you in the near future.

Keep checking our website www.touchafrica.info for all the latest news and updates.

Elise Fish