The 'Give a smile' team would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to their initiave and helped them purchase much needed stationery for the children who reside at the Jacaranda Children’s Home for their 2010 school year.

The Jacaranda Children’s Home is situated in East Lynn Pretoria and cares for 250 children, between the ages of 3 and 18 years, who live in 21 houses on the premises. The children are mainly placed in the home by the children’s court due to neglect, abandonment and physical or emotional abuse. As one of the forerunners in the field of childcare in South Africa, the Jacaranda Children’s Home runs a number of therapeutic programmes to prepare the children for a better future.

At the beginning of December, the Give a Smile team sent out an appeal to all staff who would voluntarily like to give a smile to the children of the Jacaranda Children’s home. Thanks to all the donations, the team was able to raise an impressive R5 900, which was used to purchase school supplies for the children of 3 of the 21 homes.

Last week, the team brought smiles to the faces of each of the 39 children by giving them a schoolbag each filled with a variety of stationery for their upcoming school year. Fourteen of the youngest each received a school bag, pencil case, colouring pens, a pair of scissors, glue, exercise books, covering paper and 1 white board per home. In addition to the above, the remaining twenty-five older children received a calculator, stapler, puncher, permanent marker and a maths-set.

“What an honour and privilege to be part of this initiative. I have learnt that giving back to our nation, especially to the less privileged, makes a difference to the world. Not only did we Give a Smile to these kids, we also left a mark of love and care,” said Cecilia Leketi, one of the team members.

Team member Nazerien Naidoo added, “It is humbling to see how little people really need to make them happy. We should take a page out of other people's books and learn to appreciate what we have rather than striving for more all the time.”

“What a humbling and gratifying experience to be part of an initiative that allows us to give back to the less privileged, even more gratifying was to see the generous contributions made by staff, which ultimately made this initiative the great success that it was,” said Mpho Matseba, team leader of the initiative.

The 'Give a Smile' initiative is aimed at giving and trying to make the world a better place. It's a global DFS initiative that addresses all of the employees of our company who would voluntarily like to ‘Give a Smile’ to people who could use a ray of sunshine in their lives.