Geneva Crisis...

It is almost a year since our Mandela Day project at the Geneva Crisis Center in Eersterivier.   I invited the two organisations I work with The Father's House and Resilient Kids SA to get involved after months of trying to get more help from government for the center...  Both organisations jumped in lovingly...


Our main goal was to help Geneva Claasen get NPO status so that she could get the corporate funding she needed to turn a very sad situation around... and to help do what we could with what we had in our hands.

The event was a wonderful day but unfortunately because we had not got the cooperation needed from the center, we were not able to get the NPO status and no corporates were prepared to get involved.

A few weeks after the event Tetrapak a large international company who choose to follow their heart not NPO status, got involved and did some major cosmetic work to the outside of the building.  They repaired the bathrooms, put in a kitchen and fixed up the hall and made a playroom.

While this rebuilding was going on there was a lot of work going on behind the scenes to help get the governance sorted out and the NPO status secured.  However, each time it got close to signing the paper work... Geneva Claasen pulled the plug.  She took back control and the board was fired.  I had to make a painful choice to leave at the end of last year, having seen all we had tried to do to help fail.  We had to write reports to officially state why we had made the choice... the choices were made out of principle. I made a personal choice to stop going too.  I could not bear to see the children not get what is rightfully theirs because adults would not put their fears aside.  I met with the project manager of Tetrapak who had said they would help from there...

I have not not been there in months...

Today, I got a call from E-TV who were looking to get her number from me because they wanted to feature the Geneva Claasen story in a short slot they do about leaders who change their communities.  I told them I would go visit and let her use my phone to speak to them.  My heart was all over the place...

I went to Geneva Crisis for the first time in months today and still there is no regular food program, not much of what was promised to them at all is there...  and there is still no NPO?!  The creche is running but the moms running it are not paid.  There is no way out of the poverty they are in...

The children were inside in their new creche and out of the rain and cold outside.  They looked so happy and ...  they do not know the reality behind the scenes... they do not know about the governance problems and why they do not get food regularly... they do not know that there is more for them if Geneva would just elect and cooperate with a board... they do not know that many have tried to make it better for them...

What they do know is, that they now have a working toilet, a kitchen, a bathroom, a playroom and a hall...  all they know is that they are way richer than they were a year ago... Is it ok that that is all they know?

I gave the lady at E-TV Geneva's contact number and I told her in short that I hope they can use their media influence to bring someone who could help her take the direction of good governance...

I am not sure now what my next move should be...