• Education and training (e.g. leadership development)
  
• Empowerment and income generation (e.g. craftwork, agriculture)
  
• Community projects (e.g. orphanages, food kitchens)

1. African Leadership Development Institute (ALDI)  Leadership Training, Empowerment, Income generation
2. Bethesda Arts Centre              
   Centre for Arts education and health
3. Sakhumzi
   Orphanage
4. WARMTH
   Feeding / entrepreneurship scheme
5. The Masikhulisane Trust
   Poverty alleviation, job creation
6. Bonginkosi Preschool
   Preschool for children from extremely deprived families
7. GADRA visually impaired project
   Helping visually impaired people
8. Sinethemba shelter
   shelter for abused women and children
9. Eluxolweni shelter
   Shelter for street children
10. Bonginkosi blanket project
    Income generation
11. The Alexandria Haven
    Orphanage
12. Preschool places, Grahamstown
    
    

Archive of previously funded projects dating back to 2007

1. Gauteng Peace and Development Foundation
   Empowerment, training and income generation
2. Ingelozi Eyetu
   Craftwork project

7. GADRA
   (helping unemployed blind people)
   
   Perspective
   
   The Eastern Cape has always been an area of South Africa particularly affected by poverty and unemployment. It is even harder for people with disabilities to find a job. Many remain uneducated, unemployed and without hope.
   
   GADRA: helping the visually impaired
   
   

   The Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association (GADRA) provides various services to unemployed and poverty-stricken people. GADRA receives no government subsidy and is totally dependent on donations. Among those helped by GADRA are visually impaired people, and Thembisa sends grants to support this aspect of their work.

   Visually impaired people can come to GADRA for Braille classes. A GADRA minibus collects the students, who cannot afford the taxi fare. One of their pupils had never attended school as her parents thought she would not be able to read or write so why bother? There are also computer classes (using special ‘speaking’ software) and classes in independent living and helping people make their homes ‘blindsafe’.

   A new project is beekeeping; if this proves viable it will help provide dignity and an income for the participants. Partly to counter the ill effects of unemployment, GADRA has also started social activities, including bowls and drumming. For the drumming classes, students from Rhodes University who came along to teach the blind participants how to drum soon realized how much the participants were going to teach them!