Spirit Community Foundation
Spirit Community Foundation
The Spirit Community Foundation (SCF) operates as a critical lifeline for South Africa’s most vulnerable populations, catalysing positive change through strategic partnerships and funding. By empowering local organisations, SCF tackles pressing social and environmental challenges, fostering resilience and offering hope in the face of adversity. The foundation’s impact is particularly evident in the support it provides to diverse initiatives, each addressing unique needs within their respective communities.
A prime example of SCF’s impactful work is its support for the League of Friends of the Blind (LOFOB). This organisation plays a pivotal role in the lives of visually impaired children and adults, offering essential early childhood development programmes that build crucial life skills. These programmes foster independence and confidence, empowering children to navigate their world. Beyond early intervention, LOFOB provides therapeutic services, including counselling and rehabilitation, helping individuals cope with the challenges associated with visual impairment. SCF’s funding has enabled LOFOB to expand its reach, particularly in underserved rural areas, where access to specialised services is often limited. By enhancing literacy skills through tactile, braille, and audio resources, LOFOB ensures that visually impaired individuals have the tools they need to thrive. Benita Petersen, Manager of LOFOB, underscores the organisation’s dedication to foundational literacy, emphasising the provision of adapted books and assistive technology.
Similarly, the #HearItTogether initiative, a collaboration between HearInAfrica, Rexton, and SCF, addresses the widespread issue of hearing loss. HearInAfrica provides critical services, including free screenings, affordable hearing aids, and outreach programmes, targeting underserved communities in Cape Town. SCF’s financial support is instrumental in enabling diagnostic testing, hearing aid fittings, and ongoing audiological support, ensuring that individuals with hearing impairments receive the care they need. Without these outreach efforts, many would face significant barriers to accessing essential hearing healthcare. Furthermore, SCF’s funding supports public awareness campaigns, educating communities about the risks associated with untreated hearing loss.
The Upper Liesbeek River Garden (ULRG) showcases SCF’s commitment to environmental stewardship and community development. Over two decades, ULRG has transformed a neglected space into a thriving community hub. Maintaining this urban oasis presents unique challenges, particularly during the region’s hot, dry summers. The garden’s dedicated team focuses on planting resilient species and managing the impact of heat on existing flora, including non-indigenous pine trees. Recent projects have included re-setting the stepping stones, redesigning and planting of various beds close to the banks, moving some big boulders to reinforce the riverbank to mitigate erosion and ensuring the garden’s long-term sustainability. Dr Joan Parker and her team’s efforts have created a tranquil space that fosters environmental awareness and community engagement.
The Big Issue South Africa, a social enterprise empowering street vendors, benefits significantly from SCF’s support. Funding enables educational opportunities for vendors’ children through Saturday school, sewing classes, and home improvement support. The Big Issue also facilitates vendor meetings that promote social justice and address pertinent issues facing the vendor community. Despite the challenges posed by holiday periods, the Saturday school has achieved remarkable success, with all learners passing their year-end exams. Steve Palframan, SCF director, reaffirms the foundation’s unwavering commitment to empowering vulnerable communities and continuing its impactful work.
Everton in the Community’s disability teams have once again been showcasing their talent and progress including our Visually Impaired Team and our Amputee Teams. Our Down Syndrome team had a special opportunity to take part in this season’s showcase event at Finch Farm. This event highlights the diverse programmes offered by Everton in the Community, with the men’s first-team players showing their support for the season.
On the day, Jake O’Brien, Abdoulaye Doucouré, Jesper Lindstrøm, and Beto joined our DS team for an exciting session, with two players on each team competing for bragging rights.
The event received fantastic media coverage from Everton TV, The Daily Mirror, and Radio Merseyside, who spoke with some of our players about their journeys and experiences with EitC. The Daily Mirror later featured a special interview with Saif Abu-Hassan and his father, sharing their story and celebrating his time at Everton.
Everton Free School – our Spirit sponsored library is a vital resource for our school and scholars. Recently we have invested in new literature such as comics, magazines, picture books and more non-fiction texts to ensure we house every genre. We have also been making iPads available so that scholars can access podcasts and audiobooks regularly. We also utilise iPads to facilitate our online reading tests with the pupils and they seem to enjoy using this technology more than laptops. We also try and make accessing the library fun and run a morning ‘wordle’ or ‘contexto’ and then make sure that the library is a welcoming space to listen to podcasts and audio books at lunchtime.
Among other interventions, we have noted that the reading age of our pupils has increased, and there is now less of a stigma about the use of a library.
A fabulous highlight was the trip to the beautiful Lake District and in particular to the house where Beatrix Potter was inspired to write her books. Another highlight was the museum at Windermere. Our pupils would not ordinarily have the opportunity to visit this memorable places. We are particularly happy that our Looked After Children and Special Educational Needs pupils were able to overnight with us in the beautiful Lake District.