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Mpilonhle - A Good Life

Mpilonhle News

Mpilonhle Patron Charlize Theron makes her 3rd visit to Mpilonhle

07 Dec 2009

On 5-8 December Academy Award winning actress, humanitarian, and South African native Charlize Theron made her third visit to Mpilonhle.  Ms. Theron was accompanied members of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project  team (CTAOP, http://www.charlizeafricaoutreach.org/ ), and by her mother Ms. Gerta Theron,

Ms. Theron is the patron of Mpilonhle, and through the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project one of the major sponsors of its activities.

During her visit, she focused on activities and plans for integrating sports into the Mpilonhle Health program, including the newly launched Home Field Advantage Project (http://www.homefieldadvantageproject.org/) to provide sports facilities and access to water to the schools that Mpilonhle works with in Umkhanyakude District. Home Field Advantage Project is a collaboration between CTAOP and the ONEXONE foundation (www.onexone.org).  

After arriving late in the evening of Saturday the 5^th of December from Cape Town, where she had just been seen by 250 million persons around the world after having done the draw for the FIFA 2010 World Cup matches, she was off early the next morning to visit Mpilonhle field sites in the most isolated northern area of Umkhanyakude District, Ingwavuma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingwavuma,_KwaZulu-Natal). 

She visited the Zisize Orphan and Child Project  (http://www.zisize.org/) which is providing services to schools in Ingwavuma and which Mpilonhle has started a collaboration with.  Children from the primary schools that Zisize works at danced and sang for Ms. Theron and her team. The team then visited Mpontishini Junior Primary School, one of the potential sites for the football and water project, and Ingwavuma Women’s Centre (http://www.prodder.org.za/civicrm/contact/view?reset=1&cid=1201), which helps local women gain skills for employment and establish micro-enterprises.

The visiting team then had lunch at the Tembe Elephant Park (http://www.tembe.co.za/), where they met representatives from other local NGOs, along with meeting up with elephants, rhinos, and buck at the watering hole.

On the way home the CTAOP team stopped at one last school that is a potential site for a sports and water program -  Malabela High School – where the local community waited late in the afternoon to greet Charlize and the team.

Monday the 7^th was an equally busy day.  Joined by Marc Joubert and Kevin Kew from OneXOne and the Q Fund respectively, the CTAOP team visited three high schools – Masibonisane, Madwaleni, and Silethukukhanya – which are potential sites for sports facilities (CTAOP and Woolworths have already donated funds for a grass pitch and lighting at Silethukukhanya School).  Ms. Theron donated an electric piano to each of the three high schools as a holiday present much appreciated by the teachers and the students – as these schools have some of the best choirs in the region – but no pianos.

Ms. Theron and the CTAOP team visited the Mpilonhle team in action – counseling community members, providing them health services, all the while working in the intense heat of a Zululand summer.

In the afternoon, the team was joined by Pieter-Dirk Uys. He performed for an audience of a thousand students and parents at Silethukukhanya, and was introduced by Ms. Theron (see LINK to previous news item).

And despite the long day, that evening Charlize  hosted a benefit performance by  Pieter-Dirk Uys at the local country club (LINK to news item of that event).  As Pieter-Dirk Uys said – “who but Charlize – one day seen by 250,000,000 persons on television doing the World Cup Draw – and the next day working – without publicity - for the betterment of children in one of the most impoverished and isolated areas of South Africa”.