MTN Qhubeka treated 89 children, between the ages of 5 and 10 years old, to a day outing to the Good Food and Wine Show held at the CTICC (Cape Town International Convention Centre) earlier this year.
MTN Qhubeka has a longstanding relationship with Wildlands, through their partnership in the provision of bicycles to reward and motivate green-preneurs. However, on this particular day they decided to address matters of the heart by coordinating an outing for several underprivileged children to the “big city.”
The children, consisting of some of our budding tree-preneurs and orphans from Blikkiesdorp, Eerste Rivier and Kalkfontein communities, were fetched from their homes in the morning and transported to the CTICC for the day, where they received a goodie bag and enjoyed a show entitled “Mr Maker,” which taught them how to make useful items from waste.
“For many of the children it was their first outing beyond their community boundaries and of this magnitude,” commented Wildlands Project Manager in the Western Cape, Lesley Joemat. “The children were treated like royalty by the MTN staff, taken to the VIP lounge at the CTICC and served refreshments and snacks throughout the day. For some of these children this was their first decent meal in days. Shame, a lot of them didn’t want to go back home.”
The children even wrote to MTN Qhubeka thanking them for the fun day outing, a novelty a lot of them would never get to enjoy under normal circumstances.
Some of the letters read:
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)