The Happy Africa Foundation | Always moving forward. Always giving back.

South Africa

The Happy Africa Foundation supports three projects in South Africa: Parys, St. Lucia and Cape Town.

African Cheetah Rehabilitation, Parys
Further action needs to be taken to address the problem of rapidly declining numbers of cheetah in the wild. The Happy Africa foundation is supporting the centres aims to do this with a three-phase project, which will see cheetahs released into managed environments, which are closer to their natural habitat.

Click here to find out more about supporting the Cheetah Rehabilitation Programme  

St Lucia Conservation and Community Projects
St. Lucia is situated within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a beautiful area that was declared South Africa’s first Natural World Heritage Site by UNESCO and which is called by many Africa’s premier bush-and-beach destination. Consisting of almost half a million acres, it is a stunning and ecologically diverse area, where five different eco-systems join, and where you find savannahs, wetlands, swamps, beaches, and a great wealth of wildlife. In this impressive setting, African Impact launched their St Lucia projects in July 2007.

St Lucia Rural Pre-School and Community Project
Volunteers have the opportunity to interact with and educate disadvantaged children as well as many who have been orphaned by AIDS. The project goals for 2008:

Day Care Centre in Khula Village
● Support the local day care centre for children (including orphans) aged between 0 and 6 years. Volunteers work together with community volunteer teachers to provide care, education and games to prepare the children for Primary School
● Teachers skill enhancement
● Build a new brick structure for the Day Care Centre.  This will start with 2 small classrooms and with time and funds we plan to extend this into a Community Support Centre.

HIV and AIDS in Khula Village
● Provide education programmes to the community, including schools, to help people manage and understand HIV and Aids.  This includes coming to terms with having the disease, prevention and encouraging HIV testing. Volunteers run a 6 session training program in the community
● Provide an HIV Support Group as a place for people who have HIV/AIDS to get advice and support from each other and African Impact volunteers
● Provide home based care for the very sick and elderly people with HIV/AIDS by giving basic medical care, help and food in their home

Click here to find out more about Volunteering with Rural-Pre School and Community Development initiatives in St Lucia 

Wildlife Photography and Conservation Education Projects
Building a Wildlife Photography Database for the GreenVision Foundation
● Provide photographers with the skills on how to take and edit high quality photographs through training and coaching with a professional photographer
● Create a project database of wildlife, landscape and environmental photographs to use for the our conservation education programme.  This will be achieved by spending time out in local natural areas and communities
● Through the GreenVision project some photographs will be available to other Conservation or Community organisations for free.  These photographs will also be available for purchase to raise money towards local conservation programmes.

Conservation Education
● Create and deliver a programme to schools and the adult community to help people learn about conservation in their area.  By teaching people about the uniqueness and importance of the area surrounding St Lucia, we want to encourage people to become involved in looking after their environment and the wildlife for both themselves and future generations.

Conservation in Action
● In partnership with National Parks or Game Reserves, take part in conservation activities e.g. alien plant control, animal counting and surveys, litter patrols and maintenance / building within these areas. This will be done in such a way to not impact local jobs.

Click here to find out more about Volunteering with Conservation in St Lucia, South Africa  

Cape Town Rural Medical and Teaching Projects
In a city of stunning contrasts, Cape Town’s private sector health and educational care and provision is extensive, but it is the rural communities that suffer from lack of facilities. Whilst there are some structures in place for effectively addressing these issues, there is an enormous deficit in terms of staff and resources. This is why the volunteers’ assistance is very much appreciated by the nurses, doctors and teachers in these rural communities.

Medical Projects
In 2009 our vision is to assist the medical staff and patients by providing volunteers who can fill the gaps created by staff shortages and give the patients the attention they deserve.

Our wish list for the clinics that we work at are essential medical items that they are constantly short of: stethoscopes, thermometers, otoscopes (ears), toothbrushes, toothpaste, disinfectant swabs, gloves, band-aids, and bandages.

Teaching Projects
We teach at two pre-schools, Red Hill and Children of Hope, near Fish Hoek. Unfortunately the schools have a severe lack of facilities and the children are taught from old shipping containers that have been given to the community as donations.

Our wish list for general items and for our pre-schools: scissors, craft glue, coloured paper, colouring books, anything craft related (as these items gets used up quickly), fancy dress clothes, building blocks, racing cars, and items for our make believe area like tea cups, baby cradle, pram etc. We desperately need a new photocopier so that we can continue to provide resources for the pre-schools.

Veterinarian Project
We want to assist a local non profit organisation (TEARS) with its aims to provide medical help and treatment to all cats and dogs in the disadvantaged communities around the areas we work.

We also hope to fulfil some of the items on their wish list: tinned cat and dog food, fencing and paving slabs, roll -on-grass, plastic travel boxes, veterinary consumables (syringes, needles, drips, bandages, cotton-wool, drugs etc.), collars, leads, plastic dog beds, blankets, bedding, Speedqueen Heavy Duty washing machine, tumble-dryer, kennels and stationery (cartridges, photocopy paper, laminating pouches, pens).

Sports Project
Physical Education Training (P.T.) has been removed from many school’s schedules recently, but at the local school that we work at, the Principal recognises the importance of P.T. and so we can now send sports minded volunteers to the school. They are able to help with the day to day running of P.T. classes as well as providing new and stimulating exercises for the children.

On our sports wish list we need: running shoes, black and yellow uniforms for sports teams (netball, basketball, soccer and volleyball), stopwatches, cones, medicine balls, and any variety of sports balls. We are also hoping to raise enough money to help build a sports field at the school.

In 2009 the Happy Africa Foundation is committed to supporting volunteer initiatives in the following areas:

• To reduce the burden from the staff at the schools, helping with everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning, child care, etc.
• To provide input & stimulation for children by using the skills of the volunteers, for example arts & crafts, sports, games etc. We believe this will promote the further development of the children
• To help the school to improve its facilities; providing a better learning environment for the children.
• To help teachers in the classrooms by giving extra support to children that may need special attention. In addition contributing creative ideas and supplies to enhance the children’s classes.

At our Community Projects
• At Masi Library we aim to help provide stimulating activities such as crafts, reading and games for children after they finish school.
• Extra tuition with their school work for high school students
• Sports Coaching in Basketball, Netball, Soccer and Volleyball
• School renovations, refurbishment and development.

“Masakhane is about the community taking responsibility for their own upliftment and participating in the governing of their own lives… It is about empowering ourselves by creating good working relations between government structures, sponsors and communities for the benefit of everybody.” Nelson Mandela.

Click here to find out more about Volunteering in Cape Town