History
The organization Fadderfriends is built upon a network created during work with the SIDA (Swedish Development Authorities) supported cultural project "African Drum and Dance", The project was carried out in cooperation with the Novalis Institute, Capetown, South Africa with Margareta Wolf as the project leader. During the last year of the project (2000 – 2004) a group of sixteen persons, most of them from Härnösand, Sweden visited Capetown and took part in a seminar arranged by the project partner Novalis.
The group then had the opportunity to visit a number of schools in the informal settlements around Capetown, schools that had had the opportunity to participate in our cultural project. We were told that many of the children who danced and played for us were living in orphanages. Later on we got the opportunity to visit such a home, the Baphumelele Orphanage in the big township of Khayelitscha. The home was in very poor condition and accommodated some fifty children between five months and sixteen years of age, all in an area of no more than eighty square meters. The parents of the children had all died from aids.
In charge of the home was Mama Rosie (Mrs. Rosie Mashal) and two day-time helpers. Everyone in the group was very upset about the conditions these poor children were living under and we decided to set up a network, the aim of which would be to help Mama Rosie in her unpaid and self-sacrificing work for the benefit of the children of Baphumelele. Mr. Peter Hugo, who helped out with administrative matters and contacts with the society outside the orphanage became our contact person and he was also the one who suggested the Swedish-English name Fadderfriends of our network.
The organization was set up in the autumn of 2004. From the beginning the network consisted of some forty members, individuals as well as couples and families, willing to pay a fair amount of money every month or for a longer period of time. Today, (2008) the number of sponsors has doubled and the orphanage of Baphumelele has got some 125 children. The first little home has undergone repair and additional houses have been built. The orphanage also gets support by the Government of Capetown and also by other organizations and networks like ours, among others from Germany, Holland and the US. Permits have also been given to Baphumelele to carry out adoptions from the home. Also study the link www.baphumelele.org.za and the Fadderletters!
Our engagement in South Africa has grown to include
2006: Little Angels, a small orphanage of some ten children, located outside Johannesburg and an ecological growing project in a youth prison of Capetown (one year only)
2007: A street children project for boys in Johannesburg, the Jabulani Khakibos Kids. See www.jabulani.khakiboskids.co.za
Children Resource Center (CRC) in Capetown, especially its project for girls, the Girl Child Organization. See www.childrenmovement.org.za
To help a secondary school student Ntombi Manzana, with travel costs and books during her studies in Capetown.
If nothing else is said, each project is planned to get support for a period of at least three years.
Fadderfriends' engagement in Albania
In the year of 2007 we decided to extend our support also to include Albania, one of the poorest countries of Europe. The reason was that we, Margareta and Lars Wolf, during our stay in Greece have got to know many Albanians who have moved there for work. During a visit to Gjirokaster, a town in south eastern Albania, we contacted the director of the local Red Cross Mrs Aida Hysi. The cooperation with her and the Red Cross of Gjirokaster has been very successful. In the year of 2008 a study trip to Gjirokaster was arranged in which some ten members of Fadderfriends participated.
Our work in Albania and among Albanian women in Greece include;
2007: Economic support of some thirty children in great need in Gjirokaster in cooperation with the local Red Cross. The project includes weekly meetings and holiday and summer activities. We have also been able to give some temporary aid to their families and guardians.
2008: A new social center was established near the Red Cross office in localities which used to be a discotheque. Voluntary workers have reconstructed and decorated the place and created a very nice gathering place for the children who belong to the project. The preschool children come in mornings and the school children in the afternoon. Fadderfriends has donated two new computers and paid for the teaching of computer skills through fundraising in Greece and private industry in Gjirokaster has donated another three computers. Fadderfriends has to a great extent facilitated this social and educational project, which has become the biggest single undertaking of our organization. Two Swedish voluntary workers helped out in Gjirokaster during the summer.
An Albanian Women Handicraft Cooperative was started in Stoupa in the spring and the products of this Coop have been bought by Fadderfriends and sold in bazaars and Christmas markets in Sweden and Greece. A training course in Mediterranean herb dying was offered to all members of the Coop in the autumn.
