By Lou Billett | Chairperson
This week is a happy week.
This week we saw how sponsoring an child hope for their future, and changes a future forever.
This is the story of Iva, the diva, and her sponsor family, Richard and Leigh and their children Ella and Charlie.
In 2008 I met Richard, a fellow Australian visiting Chintsa, with his wonderful wife Leigh. Richard and Leigh and their young daughter Ella, were interested in charities in the area, and as I'd just started African Angels it was a perfect way to show them around. Way before African Angels was a school, from 2008 - 2011, we found sponsors to send disadvantaged children to quality schools in East London.
On their first visit to our partner preschool at the time, Richard and Leigh met Iva, a young girl who needed a sponsor, and immediately said 'yes' to sponsoring Iva's school fees, so she could access a quality education. Over the past 10 years of sponsorship, Richard and Leigh have not only made a financial investment in Iva's future, but also a personally connected one, having visited the school and reconnected with Iva over the years.
Iva has been an African Angel her whole pre and primary school life. She has attended quality schools, including the African Angels Independent School since 2015. Something she would never have been able to achieve, if it were not for her sponsor, and African Angels making it happen.
This week Iva was awarded a bursary to one of East London (South Africa) finest high schools, Merrifield College, on a 100% scholarship. Iva will graduate from high school in 2026 with an IEB National Senior certificate, a Proudly South African qualification that is equivalent to the UK 'A' level.
In a country where 78% of ten year old children cannot read for meaning, and only 6% of children who start school will finish university it is sponsors like Richard and Leigh, supporting children at African Angels, that will start to arrest these alarming statistics, and give more children like Iva, hope that their futures will be different.
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Thank you for reading our news. We are privileged to be able to get up every day and do something we love - giving opportunities so that futures are forever changed.
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