18 July 2014
Cricket South Africa (CSA) commemorated Nelson Mandela Day by making a contribution to the education of young children at SOS Children’s Villages South Africa’s Mamelodi branch on Friday.
The organisation turned an unused storage container into a mobile library to be used by the children of the Village and the surrounding Mamelodi East community outside Pretoria.
CSA enlisted the help of publishing house Pearson South Africa to fill the library with reading and exercise books for the primary-school-aged children of the Village.
“Mandela Day should remind us of the many blessings we have enjoyed over the past 20 years and also of the enormous gratitude we owe to Madiba, the father of our nation,” CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat said in a statement.
“It should also serve to remind us of the many challenges that we must still tackle and resolve to ensure a better future for all.”
CSA ensured that the Home was given a proper introduction to the game, recruiting the full CSA National Academy of both men and women cricketers to conduct a coaching clinic with the SOS children and staff. They were joined by KFC Mini-Cricket players from the area for a fun and action-filled mini-cricket festival.
The CSA staff, along with the National Academy and members of the media, then spent their 67 minutes painting and decorating the outside of the library.
“SOS Children’s Village Mamelodi is proud to welcome Cricket South Africa as part of a large family,” SOS Children’s Villages spokesperson Lizo Tom said.
“We are very pleased with the new mobile library CSA have donated to us. We want to develop a new strategy around literacy and the love of books, and our children in the community will benefit a lot from the new library.”
A number of partners and sponsors supported CSA to do their bit on Nelson Mandela Day. Sedgars Sport, for the fourth year running, donated two sets of full cricket kit valued at R10 000, as well as 50 KFC Mini-Cricket T-shirts to the SOS Children’s Village.
KFC provided 200 kiddies meals for the children of the Village and for the KFC Mini-Cricket players, while Momentum Health added their own donation of children’s reading books for the library.
SAinfo reporter
