Killarney Mall cares

OWN CORRESPONDENT

Co-founded and managed by Witness Khosi Ntshangase, the Thembelenkosini Care Givers centre offers a safe after-school environment for children to study, further their education, and learn invaluable life lessons from the centre’s volunteers and tutors. It even offers swimming lessons, and has a library where students can read and study in a learner friendly environment.

Ntshangase says she was inspired to create the centre by her late father, Thembelenkosini, who showed love for people and compassion for the disadvantaged in his community. The centre is named after him.

“As a mall and a community, we realise the importance of supporting education, and those institutes which support our youth without government funding,” says Sharon Wapnick, the Chairperson of Octodec Investments, which includes Killarney Mall in its property stable.

Wapnick and Craig Kramer, the mall’s leasing agent, started the stationery collection initiative in December 2018. Sponsors Bostik, Dis-Chem Pharmacies, and Pick n Pay Killarney, as well as generous donors amongst the Killarney Mall community, assisted in providing a year’s worth of stationery for the centre and food supplies for about three months.

Killarney Mall donated more than 400 work books, 500 pens and pencils, 150 sharpeners, 150 erasers, and supplied Grade 10 students with calculators and maths sets. In addition to the sponsored stationery, shoppers donated countless books, crayons, files and folders, filling a total of 10 boxes. Their generosity further made it possible to purchase canned goods, rice, pap, and sweet treats, enough to serve lunch to children for three months.