Pretoria
Grant Montgomery Travelogue: Family Care Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Family Care Pretoria centers their work in a large township of 2 million, east of Pretoria, where the Stanza Bopape Community Development Centre is based. This Community Development Centre has formed business cooperatives that create jobs for the locals manufacturing construction bricks, engage in urban farming, learning sewing, baking and catering as a vocation, and so forth. In short, the program provides education, training and assistance to help individuals and families become productive members of society.
In collaboration with the Stanza Bopape Community Development Centre, Family Care Pretoria staff assists with the educational needs of the children of the community, including the daycare element of the program, allowing the parents to work. Additionally, FCAP delivers and distributes food, clothes and other needs to underprivileged families and children. The objective is not to simply give “hand-outs” but identifying and training locals who can be trained to reach out to their people.
Family Care Foundation is helping with funding toward building a needed, larger, multi-purpose center that will eventually include a library, school rooms, auditorium/gymnasium, nursery, industrial kitchen, soccer field and so forth, in order to be able to expand their programs.
P.S. – I stayed with old friends in Pretoria, who happen to live adjacent to a small game reserve. So I awoke to see a herd of oryx passing by; the next morning a herd of gazelles passed by. And then driving out of their property leaving to the airport, a huge wildebeest approached us while grazing a few feet from the car. Minutes later a monkey scurried across the road. Last night, my friends cooked up a braai (Afrikaans for BBQ) and amongst the delicacies, I had my first taste of ostrich, a red meat that tastes more like beef than fowl.