SA Rocks

With the high crime rates, the car crashes, natural occurances of brain damage that take place it’s a wonder that I hadn’t heard of headway sooner.

I am in awe of the work they do, it’s the sort of work that until you are in need of their assistance you wont even know they exist. But they do.

From their website:

Headway Gauteng, was started in 1995 and is a fully registered welfare organisation dedicated to offering various support programme’s to survivors of Acquired Brain Injury, including Traumatic Brain Injury.

Headway presently has two branches – our main branch in Hyde Park and our outreach branch (Khomelela) in Alexandra. Our aim is to eventually have satellite groups in all the main centres, as soon as funding permits. With no assistance from the government, all our funding initiatives are from private or corporate donations instigated from within our small organisation.

As I have mentioned, it is services like these that you never realise are there until you really need them. I have had my share of experience with brain damaged relatives/friends and I really wish that we had known about Headway.

If you have a vested interested in the service they provide I suggest heading over to Headway Gauteng and Headway KZN and contacting them. Ask if you can help, if they need anything or if you can provide support of any kind. I am sure that a little support will go a very long way.

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Ed’s Note: This post is a contribution from Carly Ritz.

I am more proudly South African today than I have ever been – perhaps a strange statement to make when the last two weeks have been characterized by a plague of violence, brutality and senseless hatred. I don’t think I need to describe the gruesome images and tragic stories that have already played out in local media all week. I have been sad and angry and afraid, but I have also been so uplifted and inspired by the generosity of the wonderful people of our country.

Today I visited the Red Cross office in Johannesburg. I stood in a storeroom on the 16th floor of The Sable building in Dekorte Street in Braamfontein. It was filled with donations of food items and clothing, tinned food cans and nappies. I was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude – I was thankful to be part of a nation that opens their hearts and even their homes in this time of crisis.

A colleague of mine has taken 5 Zimbabweans into his own home after they were beaten and chased from their homes. He is trying to keep them safe and offer them refuge from the volatile streets.

YFM’s DJ Sbu led a march for the youth in protest of the violence. Another march has been planned for the weekend. This saturday, people will gather at Marks Park to defend the foreign members of our country. The members of Wits University marched today.

I have had the most wonderful support from friends and colleagues in the office who have contributed so generously for the Red Cross collection. People have even been to load up their cars and help with delivering these loads to the Red Cross office. Another colleague has even offered to accompany me to the various refugee points to help deliver some supplies directly to the people in need

I am so proud of the journalists and photographers with whom I work – who have roamed the streets, day and night to show the country and the world the reality of the humanitarian crisis. I am sure their dreams are haunted by the visuals, the pain and the human suffering they encounter so intimately on a daily basis.

I am not proud of what is happening in our country right now and I desperately want the violence to cease, but I am more proudly South African than ever

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Here’s a list I found from a facebook group:

1. Speak with your local councillor, individually or in a group, and ensure that (s)he calls a ward meeting to condemn violence.
2. Start conversations with family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues, fellow learners and students, etc. about xenophobia and violence and about taking a public stance against it.
3. Call a meeting at your place of work and organise a discussion on the violence and on xenophobia.
4. Join your community policing forum and ensure that the CPF acts to protect foreign nationals and anyone else being threatened or targeted in your area.
5. Report any agitation or threats against foreign nationals or groups of South Africans to the police.
6. Check with police stations, community centres and churches sheltering victims of violence on what material donations are needed, and donate blankets, food and clothes, as needed.
7. Participate in any public forums you can access, including calling into talk radio shows, public meetings, writing letters to newspapers, etc.
8. Check that your foreign friends/ colleagues/ neighbours/ cleaners/ gardeners and their families are safe, and, if necessary, offer them refuge in your house.
9. If foreign nationals in your neighbourhood are likely to be targeted in their homes, organise a group of people to spend the night at their house so that a South African can open the door if someone knocks in the night asking about foreigners.
10. Encourage any public figures you know, including artists, sports persons, business people, teachers, etc. to speak out publically against racism, xenophobia and violence.
11. Do not let racist and xenophobic comments go unchallenged.

Mike and Stii are also asking what we can do, maybe this list can help.

I was also informed of a march taking place on Saturday:

I was informed about a march that will be taking place on Saturday:

Time and PlaceDate: Saturday, May 24, 2008
Time: 9:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Pieter Roos Park, cnr Empire and Queen, Parktown – north of Constitution Hill
Street: cnr Empire Rd and Queen Street, Parktown
City/Town: Johannesburg, South Africa

So get involved if you can.

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