Another day, another blessing – and another wonderful encounter with our locals on the streets of Cape Town. Through the generous donations of our community, we’ve put together another 25 Blessing Bags to distribute to those in need. This brings us up to probably around 80 this year alone!
As always, the reception is received with massive gratitude with hugs and smiles all round. It is always such a special moment for us to connect with these individuals who are easily looked over in our busy day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, no matter our circumstances, we are all just humans. We are all facing a different type of struggle but there is always room for us to give within our own capacity.
The project started back in 2015 as an off-shoot of the Mandela Day project our team undertook that year. Having been inspired by the Burners Without Borders project led by Doxie, The Tim Doyle started simply, leveraging his social capital to mobilise people to gift bags, clothes, toiletries and medical supplies. That year, around 20 bags were packaged up and gifted to people in the Woodstock area.
The following year, again the project continued, mostly running off of donation from the previous year. However, that year a bunch of bags (packed and ready to distribute) were stolen out of Tim’s car, and “self distributed” to the needy. Ironic, really.
In 2017, our Outreach team got fully involved, enabling the project with a Spark Grant. This re-ignited the project, and resulted in mountains of clothing, food, bags (special thanks to Gillian Viljoen for the bags), toiletries and medical supplies. Ultimately this resulted in two batches of bags being gifted at the end of 2017 and during 2018.
In 2018 Nokubonga and Shannon took over leading the project, and they’ve been instrumental in producing a record number of bags in a record amount of time. They’ve been on a roll, collecting, packing, and distributing – helping people from Obs through to Woodstock.
So, with that said, we would like to open an invitation for you to be part of the initiative in the form of donating any unneeded clothes, bags, toiletries, dry food etc. That top you haven’t worn in years but still keep? That loose tin of chick peas in your pantry? Those soaps that you nicked from the hotel all that time ago but have never used….? All of these are the perfect ingredients for a Blessing Bag. Contact [email protected] or [email protected] with any donations, or for any additional information.
Change starts with you. Let’s spread love, create smiles & give blessings – one act of kindness at a time.
