In celebration of the Public Relations Global
Network’s (PRGN) 20th anniversary, member agency principals and their guests helped build homes
in the township of Witsand, near Cape Town. It’s hard for me to express what a
moving experience this was, but I will try…
Through the Niall Mellon Township Trust, we had the
opportunity to help build homes for people who are living in shacks. Alongside
the local workers, we moved hundreds of cement blocks by hand, dumped countless
wheelbarrow loads of sand and concrete mix, mixed dugger (concrete) by hand, learned
how to lay bricks and built the exterior walls of several homes, painted window
frames and cleaned tools. I’m so thankful to Matsen, the local supervisor on my
worksite, who taught me about corner bricks and how apply dugger and place the
cement blocks evenly. He was very polite each time he had to say, “No, mam.
That’s not quite right,” and re-do my work.
It was incredibly rewarding to see the
progress made in just one day! And it was extremely eye opening to tour the
neighborhood of shacks right next door to the new homes. Thousands of people
are living in these shacks with no indoor bathrooms and using small gas cook
stoves that can back up in their homes resulting in asphyxiation and fires. The
Niall Mellon Township Trust builds homes throughout the year in the townships
of South Africa in order to get people out of shacks and into safe, stable
homes. They also run
their own skills development program, training people from those townships in a
wide range of construction disciplines. It is a truly remarkable program.
At the end of the building
day, we had the opportunity to dedicate a “PRGN House” to a young single mother
and her three-year-old son. They joy on her face and tears in her eyes said it
all. She was so overwhelmed to be moving out of a shack and into a home, and
she said she would do everything in her power to never live in a shack again.
 |
| The young recipient of the PRGN home, in the arms of Niall Mellon |
I will always be
grateful for the opportunity I had to visit South African with my PRGN peers,
but infinitely more so for the opportunity to make a small difference in our
very large international community.
Posts
