August 2023

Dear Friends and Patrons,

We are delighted to share with you that this amazing new ‘Little Lambs’ building will soon be ready to serve as an afterschool care centre for our children aged 7 to 14 years.

Construction started early July 2023 with a contract period of 6 months and at a Contract amount of R6,424,220 excluding VAT of 15% – plus extras.

  • Construction Company: Bambana
  • Management Services: Mr Tony D’Ambrosio)
  • Architect: DNA Consulting: (Mr A Marais assisted by Mr I. Jonker)
  • Funding & Project Management: Kinderhilfe-Kapstadt / SEEDS Trust: Mrs Elke Zwicker

Little Lambs’ Construction Progress – August 2023

Since July, rapid progress has continued to happen on the construction site.

Since July, rapid progress has continued to happen on the construction site Mid-August, we experienced yet another “taxi strike” in Cape Town. Hundreds of minibuses – the so-called ‘Taxis’, – the most prevalent means of daily transport for commuters to and from the townships to the city. These taxis carry up to 1.5 million passengers daily and are a primary employer around Cape Town with up to 300,000 drivers, 100,000 marshals, 100,000 car washers and around 150,000 traders selling their goods at taxi stations around the townships. The taxis are privately owned and these owners are organized into rival Taxi Associations.

Taxi drivers are notorious for not adhering to rules and traffic laws and, when the Taxi Associations call for a strike to make their demands to local or provincial government heard, all traffic comes to a standstill. For us, this strike meant that for 4 consecutive days, work could not continue on our construction site; that lost time had to be made up by overtime working – an unplanned extra cost factor.

As the property is slightly sloping to one side, a new retaining wall was built at the lower end. Amazingly, all the trenches for the foundation were dug manually by some 10 unskilled laborers who came from the adjacent Imizamo Yethu township and who took less than a week to complete the task.

At a special meeting held with 6 community leaders of Imizamo Yethu, it had been agreed that unskilled laborers should be temporarily hired by the construction manager. This gives desperately-needed employment to some of the township residents. It is vital to have these leaders ‘on board’ as they are extremely influential within the township people and thus can prevent strikes, theft and vandalism – all issues no one wants to deal with – especially during the construction phase!

Thanks to a very dedicated team, the progress – slowly but surely – can now be clearly seen …. as per the photo below:

The green fence in front sections off the area to the existing Little Lambs’ playground and, to the left, the lighter building shows the “Blue Classroom” of the Little Lambs’ Grade R Children – and, at the back, the existing Silikamva High School is the neighbour.

With much activity on site going on daily, the progress is obvious. However, this year the Cape winter has been exceptionally wet and cold; thus rainy days had to be compensated by working overtime in order to meet deadlines and to stay on schedule.

After a week of extremely heavy rain, finer weather eventually allowed preparation of the sandy base – followed by the pouring of the concrete for the floors. While the concrete was still wet and in a workable state, the top had to be ‘polished’ as this is not possible once the concrete has dried. Because of the urgency of this wet work, the site manager called for a night shift – which, for the poor workers, turned out to be a freezing cold night!!

We are extremely grateful and satisfied with the commitment and effort of the entire building team. We could not have wished for a more professional construction company and the great work which their site manager Grant and his team have completed to date.

It is important for us to share these exciting developments with you because we are so happy about the progress made – especially under this year’s difficult weather conditions.
We believe that, with your continuing support, this project will be successfully completed – and on time.

Our aim is that this year’s school leavers from Little Lambs, will be the first primary school learners to be cared for in the afternoons at this new after school centre as of January 2024.

What the care-programme will ultimately include has been generally outlined – but obviously further planning and additional financial resources are essential. We will happily report in more detail closer to completion date.

We like to remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr:
“We must accept many disappointments, but never lose infinite hope.”

A heartfelt ‘THANK YOU’ to all of you in advance ….!!!

SEEDS Trust, Standard Bank, Constantia, Account No.: 10164773493,
Branch Code: 025309, Swift: SBZA-ZA-JJ, Reference: Kinderhilfe-Kapstadt

Dietrich F. Liedelt Stiftung, Hypo Vereinsbank (Hamburg); IBAN: DE04 2003 0000 0602 0695 44;
BIC: HYVEDEMM300, Verwendungszweck: Kinderhilfe Kapstadt

Warm regards

Elke and Marlis

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Criminal syndicates may attempt to induce you to make payments into bank accounts that do not belong to SEEDS Trust and Dietrich F. Liedelt Stiftung. Fraud of this nature may be perpetrated using emails, letters or other forms of correspondence that may appear to have emanated from SEEDS Trust/Kinderhilfe Kapstadt or Dietrich F. Liedelt Stiftung. Before making any payments please verify that the account into which payment will be made is a legitimate bank account of SEEDS Trust/Kinderhilfe-Kapstadt or Dietrich F. Liedelt Stiftung. If you are not certain of the correctness of these bank account details, please telephone Elke Zwicker +27 79 268 3751 to confirm such details.