REBUILD SOUTH AFRICA 2014 Join us for the trip of a lifetime ReBuild is an international community project that changes the lives of everyone involved! Young people from Urban Saints groups all over the UK come together to travel to Mexico or South Africa where they spend 11 days building homes, from scratch, for people who have never known what it is to have a safe and permanent place to live. To date USH has been involved in three ReBuild trips; ReBuild Mexico in 2010 and 2011, and ReBuild South Africa in 2012. And now coming in 2014 is ReBuild Mexico AND ReBuild South Africa! This document gives you all you need to know about ReBuild South Africa 2014. Please note: at this stage all information provided here is subject to change as the final details of the trip are put in place.
THE BASICS
When? July 2014 (exact dates tbc) Where? Delmas/Botleng nr. Johannesburg, South Africa Who? GSCE and A2 Level students who will have finished their exams by the time the trip goes How much? Approximately £1,500 (tbc) per person (incl. flights, in-country transport, food, accommodation, travel insurance, materials and tools for the build and entry into places we visit) How many? There are just 10 places for this trip so they will be taken on a first come first served basis What next? Contact Lauren Eden (details below) to express your interest and apply
THE PROGRAMME Day 1 – Travel to SA Day 2 – Visit a lion and rhino park. Travel to Ebenezer farm – your home for the week. Day 3 – Attend a Zulu and an Afrikaans church service. Take a tour of Soweto, Johannesbury, including the Hector Pieterson museum and Nelson Mandela’s home. Day 4 to 8 – House building. Free time. Evening meetings and a camp fire. Day 9 – Finish the house and hand over keys. Day 10 – Visit a home for children and adults living with HIV/AIDS. Begin journey home. Day 11 – Arrive home.
THE WORK SITE, BUILD AND KIDS CLUB Botleng is the township where the homes will be built and is only five minutes drive from Ebenezer Farm by coach. The sites and recipients of the homes will have been chosen by the local pastors and the community. The local community are very welcoming and the work site is safe. Work starts on site at around 8:45am and finishes around 4.30pm each day. The construction method is easy to work with and does not require any prior experience or skill. The basic building project will typically be a multi-room home with concrete foundation, polystyrene type walls and a stucco finished interior and exterior. From early afternoon, local children (perhaps as many as 150, even 200 by the end of the week) will gather near the build Hitchin Christian Centre, Bedford Road, Hitchin, Herts, SG5 1HF, Tel. 01462 442238
site. You will be part of a rota of teams each day that will plan and run a kid’s club type session including games and bible stories.
HIV/AIDS ORPHANAGE (Sparrow Rainbow Village) The group will visit the orphanage where they will spend time playing with the children and helping out with jobs around the orphanage (preparing meals, gardening, cleaning etc.). The group will be emotionally challenged by what they will see and learn about HIV/Aids in South Africa. For example, until around four years ago, the South African government denied that HIV/Aids was a problem, despite hundreds of thousands of people falling ill and dying. In Sparrow Rainbow Village alone they were losing five children a week. Now things have changed and the anti retro-viral drugs are available, they have lost just one child in the past two years.
SOWETO TOUR This tour, which Humphrey Birkenstock of Rainbow Radio will host, includes a visit to the places where key figures in South Africa’s recent history such as Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu lived. A key part of the tour will be a visit to the site where Hector Pieterson, a 12 year old black South African schoolboy, was the first of over 20 unarmed children to be shot dead by the South African police for protesting against being forced to learn Afrikaans. This started the Soweto uprising which eventually led to the ANC taking a leading role in the liberation struggle.
ACCOMODATION You’ll be staying at Ebenezer Farm. You’ll be staying in dorm rooms with the rest of the Urban Saints groups (males and females separated). There is no heating in the accommodation and, as July is still winter in SA, it can be cold. Bedding is provided (bottom sheet, duvet, single blanket, pillow). The facilities at Ebenezer Farm are fairly basic, but include a shared shower/bath (with hot water), wash basin and flushable toilet in each dormitory. Amor and Urban Saints will provide all food and drinking water during the trip, with most of the meals being served at Ebenezer Farm. Hot food is served at both breakfast and dinner, with a packed lunch being provided for eating at the work site. The group will clear and wash up their crockery and cutlery using the facilities provided.
So if you’re seriously thinking about coming then here are some things that you need to know now:
More information will be released over the coming months – watch this space! But if you’re already interested in going then contact Lauren Eden (contact details below) straight away for more info and to reserve your place.
All participants have to commit to attend: o A training afternoon (date tbc) o A debrief day (including a special celebration event at church ) (date tbc)
By signing up you’re committing to raising the funds. You’ll be given a payment schedule once you’ve signed up to help break it down a bit and don’t worry although it might seem like a huge amount of money we will provide you with loads of fundraising ideas, advice and support for you and your family. We will endeavour to centrally raise 10% of the fees but that still means you need to fundraise the remainder – nothing to stop you starting now!
Lauren Eden, Rebuild 2014 Team Leader (Urban Saints Hitchin) email:
[email protected] Urban Saints partner with Amor Ministries to offer these life changing trips. Amor Ministries, based in San Diego, California, has been working in poor communities across Mexico since 1980 to build homes for some of the 800 000 Mexican families who lack a basic, secure place to live. For more information about the work of Amor please visit www.amor.org. For more information about ReBuild, please visit www.urbanssaints.org/rebuild.
