Thursday, July 26, 2012

Rockstarz Foundation - Exhale: Rockstarz's Nelson Mandela Day 67 Minutes 2012 Exp...

Rockstarz Foundation - Exhale: Rockstarz's Nelson Mandela Day 67 Minutes 2012 Exp...: Rockstarz’ 67 Minutes 2011 Last year Rockstarz collaborated with the Kanala Initiative with a huge Nelson Mandela 67 Minutes production ...

Rockstarz's Nelson Mandela Day 67 Minutes 2012 Experience



Rockstarz’ 67 Minutes 2011


Last year Rockstarz collaborated with the Kanala Initiative with a huge Nelson Mandela 67 Minutes production of games, a concert, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ drum majorettes and band along the streets of Lenasia, food, fruit and juice distribution and a lot more. It was a day well spent with youngsters from various orphanages, schools and communities from some of the townships in the South of Johannesburg.

Rockstarz’ 67 Minutes 2012


With Rockstarz being in the very early stages of setup in Cape Town, it was well suited to partner with another initiative for this year’s event, here is how it all went…
Kyra (9), Morgan (7) and Liam (4) Alcock decided to have a car wash fundraising initiative so that they could utilize all the funds that they raise to do something for a group of children that were in need as part of their 67 Minutes for 2012. Tammy spread the word and the initial uptake to this idea was pretty good but with Cape Town’s wet winter, the actual implementation was a bit challenging. Albeit, with the support of friends and family the kids were able to raise R1300!
Plans got underway to coordinate the different offerings to the community of an informal settlement in Maitland that was identified by Tippy Toes Foundation as one of their sites that needed assistance. The end offering was ‘carved up’ as follows:


Warm clothes and toys for the children and babies of the community – these were bought by the Alcock kids and donated by the staff of GET;


 Warm clothes parcels for each member of the 12 families of the community – these were also generously donated by the staff of GET and Phil for Two Oceans restaurant;


 Personal care parcels for the young ladies in the community


 Food parcels for each family purchased with a generous donation from Global Edge Technologies (GET) and


 Warm, big and fluffy blankets for each family donated by Rockstarz Foundation to keep the cold at bay for each family.

The night before and morning of the event were spent sorting through all the items bought and donated and packaging them neatly into family packs and ensuring that the contents of the packs were evenly distributed and sufficient for the sizes of each family. We braved the battering rain and when we arrived, we found that Angelo and Gary (community members) had put up a structure to protect everyone from the rain!!


Without boring you with how much fun we all had and how happy and excited the community was, I’ll just tell you how fulfilling it was for everyone to see the smiles on those 36 people, how amazing to see my male colleagues and their children playing soccer with the community’s children was, how we all rallied together to make this event a success and finally, how we made plans to go back and extend more sustainable assistance to those beautiful souls.


Rockstarz’ 67 Minutes 2013 and beyond


The experiences of partnering with other 67 Minutes specific initiatives has been good for Rockstarz as it fulfills one of our objectives to partner with like minded organizations and/or individuals; and the lessons learnt in these partnerships stand us in good stead to start preparations now for a fully Rockstarz driven event from next year. We are so excited to start already and with all of your continued support, more and more good work in our country’s most vulnerable communities is possible.

Love,

N.