THE Highway Community is invited to put a smile on residents of Siyajabula Home this Easter Weekend. Organiser Laura Cullum is calling on volunteers to join them in their tin-food tower-building day where they will be accepting donations that will be handed to the home.

Housing 44 children from a few months old to 20 years, Siyajabula Children’s home is a ray of hope for these previously abandoned children. The children’s home founder, Rejoice Mweli, said the home has always been a passion as she had to quit her teaching career to build the home.

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“I started this in 1998 and have never looked back. My love for children started when I was very young. My mom would tell me that I used to come home from school with children I felt needed care. I naturally love kids. The passion grew greater when I started teaching. When I taught, I used to be the last teacher to leave the premises because I would wait with the children whose parents did not fetch them from school. I would sometimes end up taking children who had not been collected home with me to spend the night. The next day, we would then go to the children’s home to investigate, only to discover that they did not come from homes where a child should be raised.”

Msweli said these encounters inspired her to take action to get a plot of land. She started fundraising, and with assistance, she started building.
“Siyajabula now has 44 children, aged from a few months old to in their twenties. Some of the older children have been with me for over 20 years and will stay in my care as they have disabilities and continue to need my assistance and love. We originally lived in a five-bedroom house, but just in the last two years, we had new rooms built for the older girls and boys, and we are busy working on new bathrooms. I love and care for these children equally as if they are my own, with the help of volunteers and charities. This is a very happy home,” she explained.

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Cullum said the food-tower building requires the community to come together to donate in large quantities. The building of the tower will be taking place at the Watercrest Mall.

“We have Megan from Avbob donating 200 sandwiches and 200 cupcakes on the day. We have Easter eggs, hopefully enough for two eggs per person attending. We are inviting 80 to 100 people, but with the attendees often being a granny and child or grandchild, it could land up being 100-plus people, hence we were working on numbers up to 200.”

The public is invited to join this initiative on April 8 at the Checkers entrance in Watercrest Mall. You can contact Laura Cullum on 084 885 3905 for more information.

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