Tremendous Hearts

My original internship position in South Africa is through an organization called Tremendous Hearts. It was started in 2008 by the founder, and my boss, Marilyn Votaw and is a registered nonprofit in the US, but is not yet in South Africa. Marilyn had spent a couple years in South Africa before she founded TH, which she did because she saw a need for a specific type of person to help in South Africa. TH recruits mature (older than 25), skilled, long-term volunteers to work with South African organizations in Cape Town. We look for people in the health professions, or who have experience with development and capacity building to come to Cape Town for at least a year. We then partner them with locally founded and run organizations as a way to help them get their feet off the ground, and fill in a bit of the education gap that was created due to the unrest towards the end of Apartheid. A part of the volunteers’ jobs is training so as to make the organization self-sustainable once the volunteer leaves.  A little bit of a lengthy explanation, but ultimately such a good concept since young, short term volunteers often times can do more harm than good, and cause a bit of a strain on organizations.

Tremendous Hearts is quite small at the moment, only consisting of Marilyn and myself, though Marilyn is in the process of hiring an Executive Director to be biased in Boston, but that means a lot of my job has been administrative work; editing the website, editing documents, creating briefs, typing notes, expense reports, etc. I’ve also done quite a bit of research for recruiting and for potential grants we can apply for. Due to the loss of our Development Director early on in my time here, I’ve also taken on donor records, which means I’ve learned to use our online database really well, managing pledges and writing reports. But since the organization is so small, I’ve also been able to get a very transparent view on all of the aspects involved with running a nonprofit like this. Marilyn has had me sit in on a lot of meetings with the different programs TH is involved with in Cape Town, so I’ve also learned quite a bit about development and capacity building.

The program I’ve been involved in the most is Masazane Soup Kitchen, which is located in Mbekwene, a small township just outside of Paarl. Six older women, who had been supported by another organization that ended up falling apart, each take care of between 30 and 40 children. Not necessarily in their home, but just making sure they get grants, have school uniforms, and have enough to eat. Hunger was one of the biggest concerns, so Marilyn’s church partnered with TH and they created this soup kitchen that feeds about 200 or 300 children five days a week for lunch. The Gogos, as we call the grannies who run the soup kitchen, are six spirited women, who are extremely religious and each have their own feisty personality, but are absolutely a joy to be with. I’ve visited the soup kitchen a few times, and have spent a lot of time with them by this point; one of the grannies calls me little sister. The kitchen is located in a shipping container – the framework for a lot of the buildings in the townships, and get extremely hot inside – and is placed on the property of one of the Gogos’ churches. This has also created a lot of controversy, and one question we’ve had is whether it’s a good idea to move the container or not. Being so involved with this project has shown me a lot of the complications that can happen when trying to build a program such as this. The personalities clash and there are disagreements over who is the leader, who gets to hold the key, what they should make for lunch, what days they should cook, etc. We’ve begun to have group meetings to sort out these problems.

These meetings are a whirlwind of isiXhosa, Afrikaans, and broken English, with much translating going on for the Americans from the other two South Africans who work with Marilyn on the running of the soup kitchen. There are also cultural implications to be aware of while planning – older women typically have the most say in Xhosa culture, and deserve the most respect, so the younger women don’t feel as open about speaking out about problems. The meetings are sandwiched between prayers, which when lead by one of the Gogos is a nearly ten minute long session of singing, and chanting, and shouting and gripping my hand so hard I feel my fingers might break until tears run down the face of whoever has been speaking. Simply to be a part of such a moment is quite moving, no matter your religious beliefs.

This has been a slow, but very fascinating process to watch, and has absolutely shown me the value of patience and the truth of the saying ‘two steps forward, three steps back.’ We already have a volunteer set up to come for a year to work on Masazane, which will help a lot since they need more work and assistance than Marilyn can provide, seeing as she runs Tremendous Hearts on her own at this point. I look forward to being in contact with Marilyn after I’ve left to find out about future development for the soup kitchen, there is so much potential if it can be directed properly. I will miss my interactions with those lovely ladies, but will never forget them.

The other projects are just as amazing, and all focused on children in some way, but I haven’t been as involved with them as Masazane. We work with Sibongile, a center for physically disabled children in Khayelitsha, which was literally started by a mother who had a disabled child and began collecting them to take care of. Oftentimes these children are left abandoned for lack of ability to care, or fear, and Nomasango, who is still the Executive Director of Sibongile, took them in. She had 20 children in a shipping container when a German missionary found her and began helping her get funding. Now they have three residential homes, and a day care and office. Our only volunteer on the ground right now is at Sibonglie, and she likes it so much that she extended her stay for another year at the end of the summer.

Abaphumeleli is run by a woman named Evelyn who just begun to take vulnerable children into her home to act as a foster mother, but now Marilyn and other volunteers are working on getting concrete funding and having her registered officially as a place of safety.

The list goes on forever; there are endless amounts of people in this country that need assistance. But I hope that my short amount of time here made an impact in some way, and I know it will not be the last time I come here to work in development. There are ten days until my departure date, and I’ve been dreading it for weeks already. This nation absolutely has a hold on me.

To learn more about Tremendous Hearts, or donate to our Holiday Appeal, see our website.