In the early hours of the 15th of March a fire broke out in Zone O, it quickly raged out of control and destroyed approximately 1300 shacks which left around 4000 people homeless.
Local NGOs including Prochorus immediately became involved and assisted – one of our staff members lost her home as well as many of the children in our projects were affected.
Our immediate response was to provide food and then we began to assess the needs of the community. Our next response was to collect as much clothing and bedding as we could and distribute to those who were left with just the clothing on their backs. We are currently focusing on replacing items such as beds, cupboards, tables, crockery and cutlery.
We were very grateful for the generous involvement of the local Stellenbosch community. De Zalze homeowners gave us bakkie loads of clothing to distribute. Shofar church members collected bags of clothing for distribution too. We received financial donations from both international and local friends of Prochorus as well as the local Baptist church who partnered with us by collecting funds and entrusting us to use the funds in assisting those devastated by the fire.
We partnered with relief.life to replace school uniforms and approximately 280 uniforms were bought and handed out.
We are still in the process of collecting and distributing donations to the community. We are very grateful to PEP stores who have donated 50 boxes of various items for the fire disaster victims. The sorting out of these donations takes many extra hours hard work from my very staff who are already very busy with our usual ongoing projects.
I applaud my staff and volunteers for their commitment in never giving up and reaching out to the community with compassion and practical care!!!