Doing life with a Difference

So at the beginning of this year our lifegroup (prayer group), decided we wanted to do lifegroup with a difference and try impact our community. We selected Philile Pre primary school in Deipsloot as our organisation which we would want to raise funds for. Situated in the heart of

Diepsloot Ext 12, Philile Diepsloot opened in March 2010 with 40 children.  The school provides daily meals and quality education.  The school has recruited 5 members of the community as teachers to date and has sponsored their formal training as part of a teacher empowerment pro gramme.

Our lifegroups plan was to try raise R25, 000 which will make us eligible for Cargill’s corporate responsibility program, where by they would double whatever we raise (max being R25 000). So with that in place we took charge on our mission to raise money.

1. Phase 1: Raise money through our network of friends, family and corporate.  We were kinda shocked at home may people were interested in donating and trying to get involved. We managed to raise R12, 000 within our network and Hyundai also jumped in and donated R25 000. So at this point we had already maxed passed our target fundraiser.

2. Phase 2: Philile Art work Sale. We chose to sell Philile Children’s Art work. Members of our lifegroup worked with the children at Philile and helped them be creative in their art. We thought we were impacting the community at this point but really the community was impacting us. The members who interacted with the children really built relationships with them and realised the huge gap that was needed in communities such as these. For myself I really stepped out of my comfort zone by going to Philile. After being smashed and grabbed by Deipsloot thieves….I couldn’t exactly say it was my number one destination to visit. But as I helped each child with their art I thought to myself…what if this was the child of one of your thieves????? Something humbled me right there and then.

Phase 3 is still on its way so watch this space. But here are some pictures of us selling the mugs to members in our community. If you are interested in buying a mug let me know – Mugs are R100 and each mug is personalised with the artists name. Your mug also comes with a child profile which talks about the child and his/her family.

Through a small initiative Philile Pre-primary school now has enough money to purchase 2 new containers for their school, which means they can double the number of registered children for next year J.  The whole process really made me realise that God uses ordinary people to do extra ordinary things.