CharitySA.co.za - Raglan Road Multi-purpose Community Centre

FOCUS AREA:
We are a CBO situated in Grahamstown. We transformed our pre-school into a Multi-purpose Community Centre so that we could meet the needs of the whole community. We serve them in a number of ways e.g. Computer training and internet access, adult literacy, food gardens, family literacy programme, pre-school centre, care for the elderly, we also offer free training in how to use herbs for medicinal use. We also have income saving and generating groups who do crafts and catering.

WE NEED:
The funds we get from Social Development are for the pre-school only and if we have more funds we can offer more to the community. We need to increase the number of computers as we have 8 presently and a long waiting list of people wanting to be trained. We also need food parcels for the vulnerable families we care for.

The Makana Municipality has offered to fund the Fingo Village Library. We would be grateful for books and / or fund to buy books with. The Computer Science Department at Rhodes University collaborated with us in order to set up a Bingbee computer facility. They provided the computers, whilst the Centre for Social Development raised funds for the building. Children can now access educational programmes through windows, using a touch key-pad. Children are excited by the technology, and learning at the same time! Our Community Development Practitioner, Thembakazi Seyise, has started income generating projects amongst the service centre members, in the form of self-help groups. Each week these groups meet and save a small amount of money which they use for their needs. At present they would like to buy gardening equipment so that they can grow herbs and vegetables.