Poverty Alleviation Legacy (PAL)

In 1999 people in the village of Hamburg and the surrounding area were suffering from severe poverty and great family losses from HIV/AIDS.  The main focal points for the people were the churches, where help and understanding were sought; the undertakers, where pain and distress were received; and the shabeens, where people went to forget. 

Seeing this plight, Carol Hofmeyr decided something better had to happen.  Her main and initial aim when setting up our self-help organisation, the Keiskamma Trust, in 2000, was to help the people rebuild a community that was being eroded by poverty and sickness.

Now, six years on, there have been many changes for the better.  By creating artwork for sale and heritage, the people are responding to the needs of early childhood and youth development, and general health and livelihood.  People are earning a modest living and the community is experiencing a turn-around.  Poverty and premature death are still being endured, but the situation has been made bearable, and there is a glimmer of a better future for the coming generations.

Many people are not able to work for the Trust, however. They have big family responsibilities, or they are too sick; or they live far away in poor homes with little opportunity to travel to a work place.  Some families have no earners, no father or mother, and have little or no opportunity of making changes to improve their lives.  Many children have to rely on grandmothers who are too old and too poor to rise to the demands of bringing up the offspring of their own dead children.  In response to these particular challenges a Poverty Alleviation Legacy [PAL] fund has been set up so that some help can be given, at times of urgent need. 

Read on to find out how you can be a PAL.

A distressed family had raised only a third of the R3,500 [£242 €360 $454] needed to release their relative’s body from the undertaker for burial.  The date was set, but the funeral could not have taken place without full payment to the undertaker.

PAL helped with a donation, so the grieving and farewell could happen

A boy in the province had earned top marks at school and had been awarded a scholarship for medical school.  Without R1,100 [£76 €114 $143] he could not travel and take up the award.  His desperate mother asked where she could raise funds to enable her son to escape from the poverty of the home area to start a better future.

PAL gave a donation and an opportunity for a better future to a boy like those in the picture.

For a small payment, men and women put themselves in grave danger by clearing poacher’s illegal animal traps from the forests.  The danger comes not only from handling the traps but also from the poachers.  

Local residents clean up the beaches after people from the cities have visited to party and celebrate national feast days and holiday weekends.

PAL pays beach and forest combers a regular stipend to keep these areas as nature intended.

There are many situations needing a little help to make a big difference to the lives of these people.

Gladys Nixon, of Norwich UK aged 85 years, who died in October 2005, left £1,000 in her will specifically for poverty alleviation.  If you would like to add to her donation please make contact through enquiries@keiskammafriends.com

Jan Chalmers

added 22.01.07