PERSONAL STORIES

Mothers | Outreach coordinators | Volunteers

Volunteers

Doctor Gillian:
Gillian Hodge, a semi-retired medical doctor from Canada, has been a regular volunteer at Philani for the past four years.  She comes for a number of months each year and is a wonderful asset to the organization as she knows the ropes and is able to immediately start working at full capacity when she arrives.

During her 2010 visit she has run clinics at our Nutrition Centres as well as in the field.  Outreach Workers set up a field clinic in one of their client’s homes, and Philani mothers from that neighbourhood can then bring their children in to be seen by the doctor.  She is also available to see staff who are ill or having medical problems.

As she says:”The work has been rewarding and interesting, giving me hope for the future in South Africa as health, nutrition and education improve for a previously deprived majority.”

Rachel and Mililani:
2010 has seen the advent of a new partnership between Philani and Stanford University which has started a programme in Cape Town as part of their overseas study programme. As a result of this partnership. Philani hosted two students from Stanford – Rachel Lum Ho and Mililani Trask-Batti during the first three months of 2010.

They eagerly and enthusiastically took on a variety of tasks assigned to them, the most important of which included designing new and updated brochures for Philani, and beginning the process of updating our website, something long overdue.  With their wonderful computer skills and ability to browse the web, they were able to create excellent brochures and also set up a plan to aid us with our website update.  Their contribution to Philani is greatly appreciated.

Ina:
Philani has been very fortunate this year to also have a wonderful and hard working young woman, Ina Weber, come all the way from Germany to volunteer for 6 weeks with us.  As an employee of SAP, an organization in Germany that is associated with the World Childhood Foundation, she came across information about Philani and as she said:”I was so moved by what they were doing that I felt a HAD to go to Cape Town and volunteer with them”.  From setting herself that goal, it was only a few months before her dream became a reality and she found herself here at Philani.

Ina was asked to take on a wide range of tasks during her time here – assisting our Financial Manager to move and reorganize her office and files, clean out our stationery storeroom, take inventory of all Philani’s moveable assets, help out in the Educare, even acting as a Shop Seller on a number of occasions when things got busy.  As one of the staff remarked:”we got so much done having Ina to motivate and help us – always with a big smile, ready to do anything we asked”.

Dr. Ingrid
This year Philani has also had a dentist, Dr. Ingrid Nilson, from Sweden, volunteer her services with us in our dental clinic for two months.  This has enabled Philani to provide curative dental services to a lot of non Philani Educares identified by our Outreach Workers in their communities. Ingrid’s calm way of handling these young children, many of whom are quite traumatised by their first ever visit to a dentist, often needing to have teeth extracted or fillings done, was greatly appreciated.  She was also a great teacher to our dental staff, educating them about different issues that would arise in the course of each day’s work.