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Twenty years ago, the Campus Y South Africa Scholarship Fund (SASF) was organized by two Y leaders and Morehead scholars – Richard Hoile and Francesca Varcoe - on their return from a summer in South Africa. During 1986-1987, the students collected over $40,000, which has now grown to over $63,000. In 2005, the Campus Y contributed $3,000 to Christel House school in Cape Town SA for student mental health services. In 2006 and 2007, the Y renewed funding for this critically needed program.
 Christel House (www.sa.christelhouse.org) provides a comprehensive education and leadership development program for the very poorest children in Cape Town, working with children from 6 of its 8 townships. “With 70% of all children (in SA) living below the poverty line, therapy is a luxury. There are no ‘quick fixes’ when working with young children who are struggling emotionally.
(picture by Torrye Jones, a UNC Honors Abroad intern at Christel House in the fall of 2006)
Christel House is committed to imbuing these young people with the concept of giving back to the community. The staff see their students as among the future leaders of the new democratic South Africa. “At Christel House we take children from townships like Bokmakierie, Hanover Park, Kewtown, Langa, Mannenberg and Vygieskraal, from homes that know only deprivation and abuse, and we clothe them, we feed them, we heal them, we love them and we teach them. And when we change them, they change their families, their families change their communities, and those communities become the worlds we can live in. You see, the way we see things, if we want that better world, free of want, abuse and deprivation, then we’re going to have to do it one child, one family, and one community at a time.”
The South Africa Scholarship Fund supports the next phase of the struggle against apartheid – building a new democratic society - and is an opportunity to continue the historical commitment of Y members and progressive students. With additional fundraising, we could reach the SASF founders’ original goal of raising $100,000 – enough for supporting mental health and other educational services as well as providing a scholarship when the first Christel House student graduates in 2010!
For more information,
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or call 919-962-2084. |
