In a heartwarming act of benevolence the Santa Shoebox Project, on 27 October added to its list of new beneficiaries Impumelelo Soup Kitchen and Orphanage – an NPO organisation from the informal settlements of Somalia Park in Vosloorus. It presented the organisation with its signature gift boxes that within them have necessities like toiletries, as well as toys, custom packaged to each child’s wishes.
The Santa Shoebox project’s gifting comes as a god-sent to Impumelelo Soup Kitchen and Orphanage ahead of the festive season, alongside its creative and academic efforts to pull its community out of the mud of gross injustices of poverty and inequality faced daily. Through the act of compassion shown by Nomthandazo Ntombela, a concerned and proactive community member and former ECD worker, took the personal initiative to register the organisation in the period of doing her own independent research and applications for donors.
Impumelelo Soup Kitchen and Orphanage subsequently became one of the organizations that were successful in vetting online applications from the Shoebox Projects’ website.
“I first asked the Shoebox project how I can apply for an organisation, and, also being aware of Impumelelo as being a community center in Somalia Park – and how their work helps children foremost – they automatically came to mind because I love anything that puts the best interest of children first,” Ntombela said.
Managing Director & Founder of Impumelelo Soup Kitchen and Orphanage, Thabo Kiviet Madubedube, said that as this is the first encounter of benefiting from The Shoebox Project the organisation was very grateful to be one of those picked in 2024.
“We are also very grateful to our community members who see our work and are inspired to help lift us through their understanding and abilities,” Madubedube said. “The children will now even have a better closing party when our centre closes ahead of the festive season, as they will also have something special to take home,” he said.
The Shoebox Project sub-coordinator, Ubuntu Hadebe, tasked with conducting site visits and assisting in managing the distribution of gifts across the different facilities within her respective region and leadership sway says she was impressed with how the center “instead of complaining about all of the wrong things that are happening around it chose instead to do something for the children that are in need and provide a solution for it.”
Hadebe alluding to the condition the community was in, said it was admirable how Impumelelo Soup Kitchen and Orphanage was “mind-blowingly doing so much with so little”.
“It is important to us as The SantaShoebox to make such donations available to the less fortunate. I hope that we bring these kids actual joy and that whatever we have done as an organisation will help them get more sponsors and donations.”
Hadebe said “The box might seem small from the end of all the donors that gave towards the Shoebox Project, but to the little ones it means a lot and adds much-needed joy in their lives. So we would also like to extend gratitude to everyone who made it possible for us to be a channel of hope and merriment for those in need.”
By Motshabi Hoaeane
