Tag: charity

Cycling For Saffron – can you help?

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tl;dr – Help my friend’s partner out by donating towards her medical expenses after she had a stroke aged 24, and then was hit by a brick during a taxi protest by donating here and sharing this post.

It’s not often that I ask my readers to consider helping out with a charitable cause.

There was that one, of course, where we were able to make such a massive difference to a young lad’s life.

We were even on CNN. Incredible to think that that was 13 years ago now.

Can we do something as big again?

I play football with a great bunch of guys. I’ve mentioned this before. One of those guys is Andile.

Here’s the story of his girlfriend Saffron, and how you might be able to help her out.

These are words from her physiotherapist, Jennifer.

Saffron is a lovely outgoing 27 year old young lady who suffered a massive stroke in October 2022 that left her with severe paralysis of her right side and unable to use her right arm or leg. 

Through incredible hard work with her therapists, she regained the ability to walk again and even started going to the gym. In June 2023, after months of work, she started getting some movement back in her right shoulder and elbow and could even close her hand a little bit.

On July 26th 2023, Saffron suffered a setback when she had a significant seizure. This was due to the scar tissue in her brain causing a short circuit. She was immediately put on anti-seizure medication – which she has to be on for life. 

On Saturday, August 5th, 2023, Saffron and Andile were driving past the IY township in Hout Bay, when the thugs that were participating in the taxi strike violence threw a brick at their car. It entered the passenger window and hit Saffron on her head – right over her new skull implant. It shattered the implant and caused a new bleed on her brain. Saffron had to have immediate emergency surgery and the broken plate had to be removed.

After her second surgery, Saffron continued with intensive therapy and was able to start walking within 6 weeks. This took a huge effort, as the second injury damaged her brain further and really impacted the movement in her right arm and leg.

In October 2024, blood tests showed ongoing cellular inflammation despite Saffron being otherwise healthy. Finally, she got a diagnosis – Takayasu’s arteritis. This is a rare, incurable autoimmune condition that causes inflammation in large blood vessels, clot formation and strokes. By starting large doses of steroids, she was able to slow damage, but will sadly have to be on medication forever. The treatment also has significant side effects and it has taken all Saffron’s courage and determination to continue her fight to recovery.

At the moment, Saffron is still requiring a combination of Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and Biokinetic Therapy, which adds up to about R25 000 a month. Medical aid has not been covering any of this for the past year, which has depleted all our previously raised funds. Saffron still needs all these therapies for at least another year, if not longer.

Her boyfriend, Andile, has never left her side, and is now adding to his health goals in support of her. As a cyclist, he is dedicating his ride in the coming Cape Town City Cycle Tour to raising funds for Saffron. I will also be doing the cycle race to bring awareness to patients who have had neurological injuries.

If you would like to support Saffron in her recovery, please consider donating a few rands for every kilometer of the race. It is 109km in length and follows the beautiful Cape Peninsula.

As her physiotherapist, I have been very honored to have worked with Saffron during the past 24 months. There is no-one more deserving of our support to assist her to overcome these setbacks.

Thank you for considering a contribution to help this gutsy young lady. All donations will be used strictly for medical costs.

Here’s the link you need.

https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/cycling-for-saffron

I can vouch for Andile, Saffron and backabuddy (the local equivalent of JustGiving or GoFundMe).

Every little helps: even just sharing this post or their website link on your social media.

Foreign currency goes a LONG WAY in South African Rands. Just saying.

So… please… go for it.

Help out financially if you’re able.

Share this post on your social media and maybe someone who sees it will also donate.

Thanks, all.

Day 516, part 2 – Places to donate money

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Earlier today, the JG Zuma Foundation – the somewhat shady organisation with no official headquarters or web presence (ok, there’s a twitter account) – set up to spread happy happy joy joy stories (wholesale propaganda) about our horrifically corrupt ex-President, posted this image (which I have slightly adulterated), requesting donations towards legal fees as JZ (occasionally) tries to fight the numerous charges against him.

Never mind that this dude and his cronies syphoned billions from the national coffers. Never mind that his family regularly share images of their latest luxury purchases and five star trips abroad. Never mind that his homestead had “security upgrades” which cost the public R246,000,000.

He needs your money.

Right.

But there are still people who will donate to this cause. Like there are still people who will take Ivermectin for Covid-19.

Great news: you don’t have to be these people.

If you have money to spare (in this economy, ruined by guess who? ha!), then please don’t give it to JZ.

Give it to The Haven and help homeless people in Cape Town who don’t have a R250million mansion to live in.

Or give it to Gift of the Givers, who are doing remarkable work all over South Africa and overseas.

Or even just go and treat yourself to a burger or something. You deserve it.

Just please – please – don’t give it to Jacob.

Cold, wet… Charity

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It’s about this time of year that I make my regular annual plea to help out people stuck out in the cold in our area. A couple of cold fronts have brought some very heavy rain and some alarmingly chilly temperatures to the Cape and this sort of weather obviously really exacerbates the difficulties for the homeless people in the city.

Last night, I was in my car, battling my way through floods, gales and torrential rain when I heard that my football match had been called off. I returned home (direct access from garage to house), got changed into some cosy warm clothes, lit the fire and got myself a coffee.

Nice life.

The Haven is a group of shelters which can help or local homeless people with – at the very least – a bed for the night. And they have very strict and well-enforced zero tolerance policy on drugs, alcohol, weapons etc.

If you can donate just R12 (that’s 64 pence or 82 US cents), then you can provide a bed for one person for one night.

And it’s really easy to do. Snapscan here, for you locals:

Or via this page if you don’t have Snapscan or if you’re overseas.

I’ll be making a donation and I’ll also be encouraging my kids to use their charity pocket money to help The Haven out this month too. Why don’t you make a difference as well. 12 bucks. De nada.

Thanks for reading.

Running Doula update

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Incoming from Melinda, one half of the comedy charity duo that is the Running Doulas.
It’s a brief account of their weekend away in Knysna and their experience of the dreaded Knysna Half:

 The Running Doulas got off to a somewhat unfortunate start. Unhelpfully, disaster struck the day before the race, when I woke up with the beginnings of a cold. This led to a stressful day of indecisiveness before eventually agreeing to leave the decision to a doctor in Plett. After initially suggesting I decide based on how I felt on race day (which I naturally interpreted as ‘full steam ahead’), the GP called back having consulted another physician, and told me unequivocally not to run. Nothing like being banned from doing something to bring out the pig-headed in me! Decision made.

Race day arrived in a cold, dark and early fashion. An hour-long wait for taxis was followed by a hair-raising taxi journey up to a freezing cold, mid-forest start. We barely noticed. Wrapped in bin bags and Jet blankets, we joined the thousands of nervous runners lined up and waiting. A delayed kick off does nothing for the already frayed nerves, but happily four months of training and plenty of terrified projecting all evaporated as the Running Doulas headed off into the forest for our first ever half marathon.

The first 3kms of the race were mostly uphill. The next ‘undulating’ section could better be described as, um, uphill. The views were spectacular which almost made up for the pain. Almost. And just when the relentless uphill came to an end, the route led to the longest steepest downhill I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering. Many runners walked it. Others ran it backwards or sideways in the interest of using different muscles. All of us cursed it. And then possibly the cruelest part of the race – on finally reaching the last flat 6km section, the route passed under a bridge before leading us to stairs. Stairs! I’d just run 15km. I very nearly sat down and sobbed.

Kim and I both struggled through the last few kilometres on exhausted legs to cross the finish line in under 3 hours. So enormous was our delight that you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d finished in the medals. There were hugs, cheers and probably unsurprisingly, tears.

Without a doubt, it was the support that carried us through the hardest parts of a tough course. Donations are still coming in but it looks like we’ll raise at least R27000, nearly double of original target. To all who supported either by donating or spreading the word – thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You’ve genuinely made a difference.

Great stuff!
My favourite bit was when they put stairs in the route after 15km. That’s like someone throwing broken glass into the long jump pit from the 8m mark onwards. “Congratulations on your fantastic achievement in getting this far. Now, in recognition of your efforts, we’re going to scar you. Permanently.” (a bit like this)

But I think that the real takeaway message from this is that fat figure in the last paragraph: R27,000. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and I reckon that equates to 180 MatPacks. And that’s going to make a huge difference to 180 new mothers and their children. We’ll try and get another follow-up later this year to see how that money has been spent.

Well done Melinda and Kim.

P.S. It’s never too late to donate™ – here are the banking details you require!

P.P.S. Corroboration of the chilly, delayed start story by PamieJane here.

Support the Running Doulas

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Hello readers.
Here’s something you can help with: the Running Doulas.

It sounds like some sort of comedy act (and in fact it may well turn out to be rather amusing to watch) but actually it’s two ladies doing something for a very good cause.

Firstly, you may not be conversant with the word “Doula”. Wikipedia can help here:

Doula is a word that has most closely become associated with a woman or man who provides non-medical support to other women and their families during labour and childbirth, and also the postpartum period.

In countries like South Africa, where the public health system is at best pretty awful, doulas are invaluable aides in the maternity wards. If you or someone you know has had a baby in a first world healthcare system or in the private healthcare system in SA you might want to compare your experience with this typical scenario:

The majority of  mothers are young, unmarried, have had no antenatal education and are desperately poor. They return home after a traumatic and lonely birth experience, on public transport, within about 6 hours of giving birth. All too often, they return within a year to give birth to another child.

It’s no exaggeration. Spend any time on Portswood Road near the Somerset Hospital and you will see many young women waiting for a minibus taxi, looking tired and scared, awkwardly clutching a bundle of blanket. It’s a heartbreaking sight.
And much as you might like to, obviously you can’t help every single one of these mothers. But what you can do is make a difference to some of them, via these Running Doulas I was telling you about.

Doula Kim and Trainee Doula Melinda are running the Knysna half-marathon this weekend to raise funds for Maternity Packs, each one of which:

…goes a long way towards changing the birth experience of the young mother who is touched by the gesture and better prepared for her first few weeks of motherhood.

Each pack costs R150 (£13.50, $21.50) and you can see exactly what’s in one here.

Aside from the important reasons that they are doing it, it should be noted that the Knysna half-marathon (or the “Knysna Half” as it’s known to those of use who are in the know about writing about other people running long distances) is no ordinary run. It’s widely regarded as one of the most difficult and dangerous races on the local running calendar.
This is primarily because of the knee-sapping, cartilage-busting, mainly downhill route and the wild animals which still roam the ancient forests of that area; we’re talking elephants, zebras, wildebeest, griffins, dragons and unicorns.
Well, we’re talking elephants, anyway.

But I digress. Often.
You can help Melinda and Kim by supporting their run and donating to their important and worthy cause via this bank account :

Name: MA Rollinson
Bank: Standard Bank – Thibault Square branch
Number: 274999277
Ref: MATPACK

If you want to get in touch with Melinda about the run or with any other doula-related query, you can email her here or via twitter here.
And to show our support for the cause, 6000.co.za is putting our money where our mouth is and donating 2 packs.

Please spread the wealth by clicking a button below and sharing this on Facebook or Twitter. 

We’ll let you know how they got on when we know how they got on. OK?