New hope springs in Melville
Hotel Hopes Ministries opens its new foster home for girls.
Hotel Hope Ministries continues to change the lives of our community’s most vulnerable as it celebrated the opening of a new foster home.
The opening of their new home for girls took place on July 18. For now, the home that can cater for six, will serve as a loving home to five girls who had been from one of the organisation’s other homes.
Founder and CEO Oliver Quambusch said the girls are just so happy to live in a home that is slightly less transitional and less busy than their other homes where children come and often go on to be adopted or reunited with their extended families. “This home’s oldest girl living here is eight years old and she, along with others, will stay at the home until they are in their early 20s.”
For the organisation, Mandela Day is a very auspicious day for them to open a children’s home. Quambusch recited one of Nelson Mandela’s quotes that spoke about how one can judge a society by the way it treats its children. “Many children are not treated well and we feel we want to honour Madiba by opening a home where children are completely safe,” he said.
About 60 people – who consisted of care workers, supporters of the organisation and some of the children they assist – were invited to the event.
Quambusch explained the organisation’s first children’s home was opened in 2011 and to him, giving a secure base; a home where love, compassion, and generosity flow freely is really what he has moulded his life’s work around. “I believe in the three stages of life, we learn then we earn but then at some stage we should return what we have learned and earned and what we doing is all part of the returning what we have learned and earned.”
He added that he strongly believes in giving children a perfect upbringing in a way. “I do not like the term disadvantaged, I believe that God has a plan for all of us, a plan [for us to] to prosper and not to harm us. If your parents, for many different reasons, are unable to care for you, that doesn’t mean you are a second-class citizen. This means someone else needs to step up and fill that void and take you on as their own and this is what we really want to do.”
In the last two years, they have had very few adoptions, due to courts and certain provincial departments not working, and internationally, families couldn’t travel into the country. The organisation now looks forward to opening its fifth home, another foster home, later this year which will be based in Newlands.
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