In a few weeks time me, my wife Rachel, and our baby Eloise are flying off to South Africa for three weeks. For the last two years or so we have been working with and supporting an amazing, small charity called Oasis. They are based in Johannesburg, working mostly in a new development called Cosmo City.
They are a small team of just eight or nine people and yet the impact they are having is truly phenomenal. We went out in January 2008 to run a camp for school leavers and that was an amazing experience. It was such a privilege to be able to invest in these young people’s lives from the townships around Johannesburg. You often wonder what difference you can make it a week but it was so encouraging to see the transformation so many of them experience in that short space of time.
Our friends Ollie and Laura are going to be joining us for the trip. They are both teachers here in Sheffield, England. They are going to be working with the education stream of Oasis and the schools out in Johannesburg and hopefully establishing links back to their schools in Sheffield.
Me and Rachel are looking to gauge a much fuller understanding of all the different areas the charities are working in and documenting that with a view to raising both awareness and funds for the work that they are doing. I’ll be blogging and tweeting as much as possible whilst I’m away. My hope is that many more people would be inspired to connect with and support the amazing work that Oasis are doing. As well as this, we’re hoping to invest in the team working out there.
Over the coming weeks before we head out I’ll take a little more time to talk about the work that they’re doing. In the meantime, feel free to check out their website: www.oasisza.org.
If you have specific questions about the trip that do please add them below and I’ll try and answer them as best as I can.
For me, being involved with this work is a big part of me living life fully alive; fully awakened. My dream is to inspire as many people as possible all over the world to dedicate at least one week a year to serving others through projects like Oasis. Imagine what might happen if more and more us committed to building long-term relationships with organisations like Oasis, both supporting and working with them.
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