A speech by Claire, sent by email.

To honoured guests, family and friends, and the children.

I welcome you all; it’s a great pleasure to have you here at this opening of the Lula Isandla kitchen and the extensive re-vamping carried out on the Zenzeleni Centre, for which we have many many people to thank.

We have come a long way over the last 4 years, and I would like to thank everyone for all the contributions they made to get us started and then to keep us doing what we set out to do, namely, to provide a cooked meal for destitute children in the Mpophomeni area.

I would like to thank:

• The Trustees of the Centre, especially Ilan Lax and Chris Khosa, for their vision and encouragement.
• The Zenzeleni Committee for their support, especially Bonginkosi Ndlovu, who is always available to assist in whatever way required, and who also did a wonderful job as Project Manager while we built the kitchen in controlling the labour and materials.
• The Zenzeleni Community who have accepted us onto the premises. It used to be a quiet office space and now, daily has 250 children coming in to get their lunch, a big change for them.
• The Mpophomeni Community who have been so supportive, especially the South African Police Services for their assistance
• The Vukuza Mamas for their unfailing loyalty to the programme
• And mostly to Fakazile Mchunu for her friendship, her support, her commitment, her ideas, and her wonderful generousity of spirit to all she meets.
• Finally I would like to thank all the suppliers for their contributions in building the kitchen and revamping the centre, your kindness and generousity enable us to accomplish far more than we had hoped for.

Of course none of this would be possible without the hundreds and hundreds of donors from around the globe, but a special word of thanks is needed to my family, who have such a large but very very generous network of friends! Thank you all!

There are so many people who give in big ways, small ways, regularly or intermittently whom we owe so much to, I thank you all But I do need to single out some individuals though, who have made a huge difference to this project

• Fourbas Farming, Manny and Tony, who weekly donate cabbages carrots and when available potatoes, literally fresh off their farms, an immense contribution from one family
• Sony Ericsson who through Colin Williamson’s amazing drive have donated huge funds for the feeding scheme and for the construction of our wonderful kitchen
• And Ingrid, Victoria and Rebecca who are the backbone of all the funding for the feeding scheme which allowed us to grow and grow and grow, and while the numbers increased the funds increased, ensuring that our endeavours are sustainable.
• Thank you - we are so sad none of you are able to be with us today, to see what we have achieved because of you thoughtfulness and kindness.

Tea and cake and juice are served on the new verandah, followed by lunch, using our new kitchen, tables and benches.

THANK YOU TO YOU ALL

Since the early days of Lula Isanlda, we have been cooking outside of the kitchen. The exisiting kitchen is very small and the stove is too small to cater for the large pots needed to cook for all the children.

We therefore bought gas cookers (have alook here to see them) so that the cooking could happen anywhere. Further to this we buy gas from AA gas every month, and every month or so they donate a bottle of gas.

This month (July 2011), in lieu of the monthly donation they serviced the 'gas cooking table' instead. Thanks to Ellen for arranging this.