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 JAMES HOUSE
Received from Joan Hayes, founder member of James House, on 23 July 2011
The beginnings of JH started when Hilary Price set up a soup kitchen out of St. Peters church some 27 years ago.
The kitchen was an outreach to the children from the informal squatter camps along the river and also children from the farm.
Many came after school for soup and sandwiches, a juice and games.
I offered to volunteer at the kitchen and that was the beginning of my involvement.
A family of kids the oldest of whom was called James attended regularly, gradually we learned that the kids were in a very vulnerable position, dad alcoholic and mum disappearing for weeks at a time to the Cape flats (prostitution). Hilary invited the kids to her home for a swim and some fun on many occasions, late one night they appeared at the door of her home scared and cold with nowhere to stay, (dad had chased them away).
Hilary put them to sleep at her home and that was the beginning of many months of working with the family to try and find some sort of stable home environment. The government was not interested and the long and short was that a small group of us headed by Hilary Price started a committee to establish a short term safe house for kids at risk in the greater HB area. It started slowly, Hilary writing letter for funding to various charities all over the world, local business and Rotary pitched in too. We found a second hand Murray Roberts construction site building for sale.
We bought it at a very good price and paid for it to be shipped to HB from P.E or Durban (can’t remember).
In the meantime we were trying to find land to establish this home on. Nobody wanted it in their back yard. The Moravian Church finally agreed to allow us the lower half of the land below their little mission school to erect the home. Lots of community and business help made the home come true. We had to find house parents that were suitable, long process but we found them in the end.
I don’t recall the time frame but it took about 18months from the beginning to the establishment, the Ministry of children also agreed to provide some support. Our first family was James and his 4 siblings. We named the home James House after James who was the oldest of the 5 that brought the need for this home to our attention.
We also did a very successful drive to raise funds by doing a mail drop to each home in Hout Bay, the campaign was designed by a top advertising executive who was married to a lady from the Catholic Church, included in the drop was a monthly donation form via a direct debit system, which worked really well. Rotary gave us R5000 at the time.
I lost touch with the happenings when we went sailing, as did Hilary. Hilary now lives in NZ and we live in Canada, I don’t recall the names of the other committee members, the 2 churches St Peters and The Valley church took over the “oversight” of the project and the Kruger’s and also a lady who is now the associate pastor at Valley, Lesley McCall was involved.
Greetings from Joan and enjoy the day. |
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