Delight for children, relief for flood victims
Thirty families lost their homes, and the resort was part of a group of local businesses and community leaders that came together to provide aid to these families.
The Wild Coast Sun has joined the relief efforts aimed at helping communities devastated by the flooding which hit the eastern parts of South Africa last week.
Together with the Mayor of the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Local Municipality, Daniswa Mafumbatha, the Wild Coast Sun sought to support around 30 families affected by the recent heavy rains in Mbizana in the Eastern Cape.
“Thankfully our region was less affected by the floods, compared to the northern coast, but there are those that needed help in our community,” says Peter Tshidi, Wild Coast Sun’s general manager.
Thirty families lost their homes, and the resort was part of a group of local businesses and community leaders that came together to provide aid to these families.
Wild Coast Sun donated 30 mattresses and bedding valued at over R30 000.
Tshidi said: “We hope the families are able to sleep a little easier after the turmoil they have been through.”
Easter is traditionally a time of blessing but there was a special treat in store for the children of the Umz’uvukile Special School Centre, which looks after children with special needs in Mbizana.
The Wild Coast Sun was part of a group of local businesses and community leaders, including the mayor of the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Local Municipality Daniswa Mafumbatha, who took part in the special Easter outreach project on Easter Monday.
General Manager Peter Tshidi said the resort had hosted lots of families over Easter time and watching children enjoy the festivities it struck him that there may be some children in the surrounding communities for whom the joy of Easter was not something they were likely to have experienced.
“I spoke to my team about this and we put plans in place and we also reached out to our local business partner Ronaldo Mayor who co-owns Debonairs Pizza and who was only too happy to see how we could make a difference in the lives of some of these kids.”
Together with the office of the mayor, they identified the Umz’uvukile centre and the Ikhaya Lembizana home and day care centre for the disabled. Mayor Mafumbatha said it was important for government and local business to come together to explore different ways to show support and care to vulnerable persons.
“Our team at the Wild Coast Sun got together to make a giant Easter egg cake for the kids at Umz’uvukile. The size of the Easter egg was 760cm x 480cm – about the size of a giant dinosaur egg!,” Tshidi said.
To show the magnitude of the egg, the main ingredients included 120 eggs, 4kg butter and 4kg cake flour for the cake and 4kg icing sugar, 3kg butter and 7kg plastic icing.
“All in all, it took our team of inspired chefs and culinary artists 24 hours to make this giant-sized Easter egg cake and to see the delight on the faces of the kids made it all worthwhile,” Tshidi said. “Suddenly, they too got to experience the childhood joy and thrill of Easter.”
But that was not all. The children at Umz’uvukile were also treated with different flavours of pizzas from Red Ruby Solutions.
“It is such a blessing and brings so much joy to see the delight on the faces of these kids and we were absolutely thrilled to be a part of this initiative,” Mayer said.
The Easter egg project team also delivered Easter goodies including Easter eggs and more pizza to the Ikhaya Lembizana centre where there was equal delight among residents and staff.
Mayor Mafumbatha said that the outreach to the two centres caring for the needs of vulnerable persons had made this Easter extra special.
“Nothing can describe the joy from seeing the delight on the faces of these special children and others with special needs and a very big thank you to all who supported and got involved,” she added.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
