Growing Egoli

About us:
We are a group of young study abroad students spending our fall 2013 academic semester in Cape Town, South Africa. We came to South Africa to embark on a new journey and become global citizens in this interconnected world. We are here to explore how lives are lead differently, and how history has shaped this country. In a few short weeks, we have had the opportunity to witness these hardships first hand.

What we are doing:
We will be volunteering our time at Egoli, a small impoverished community in Cape Town. Egoli residents face a number of challenges, including but not limited to, living in makeshift shacks without electricity, limited running water, malnutrition, and widespread disease. The community members receive no aid from the man who owns the private land that they currently reside on.

Our group has met with several Egoli community leaders and assessed their most immediate needs. We plan to help them meet those needs with a focus on sustainable improvements that will break the cycle of generational poverty.

Planned projects:
· Providing solar-powered lamps and food parcels to the elderly people in the community
· Installing a new floor in their church and expanding it by one meter (which doubles as a school for small children)
· Implementing a community garden for growing fruits and vegetables.
· Helping the members of Egloi establish themselves as an NPO, in order to receive government funding, which would go towards occupying a small piece of land to be used for agricultural purposes. This would allow the members of Egoli create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.
· Encouraging the citizens to take pride in the place that they live by hosting art exhibitions and other community events
· Providing them with emergency medical kits because ambulances can take up to an hour to respond to their calls.
· We are also taking time to educate the students and encouraging the teenagers to spend a day at the University of Cape Town or the University of the Western Cape to show them the opportunities college brings.

We Need YOUR Help!
Unfortunately we are starting these projects from scratch, so we have a long way to go before we are financially ready to undertake them. You can look through some pictures of the Egoli community that we are assisting and you can see how breathtaking their circumstances are.

Now, we are here asking for your help because we can't do it alone, and the members of this community cannot do it alone either. We are committed to putting in the time, and resources to give the people ofthis community what they deserve and lay a foundation that they will be able to sustain, but we do need help. Any contribution to this fund will help. All of the money we make is going towards the community and resources needed to help them. Our current goal is $3,000.00 to put towards the community. We think that with very generous donors that we can exceed this and make a huge impact on their lives. To put things into perspective for every $1.00 water bottle you buy, it can buy this community over 100 band aids, which they currently do not have.
We appreciate any aid that you can give us.


If you have any questions, or have alternative ways to help us, please contact us at [email redacted]. Through this site, you will see what your money has done directly, to support this community.

THANK YOU!