2024 Christmas Gifts – OYCC
One of the annual projects the Rooiels Outreach is an undertaking to support the Overstrand Youth Care Centre (OYCC) with a Christmas gift. The OYCC is a registered residential home to up to 25 children between the ages of 6 to 14, providing care, education and re-socialisation of children in need of protection and care, and falls under the auspices of Kleinmond Child Welfare. They strive to create a safe haven for children who have experienced hardships and challenges of life from a tender age. These children come from diverse backgrounds, and many have faced abuse, neglect or loss of families and other hardships, but their potential is nurtured and developed at the OYCC, and they strive to overcome their circumstances with resilience and determination.
With a few years of experience under our belts, we have realised that, at Christmas time, the children are gifted by many organisations and individuals with a huge amount of all sorts of things, such as clothing, shoes, stationary, sweets, toiletries, toys, etc. The consequence of this is that the kids are overwhelmed with ‘stuff’, and the gifting becomes meaningless and just a free-for-all ‘consumer party’.
This year, therefore, in consultation with the management of the centre, we decided to gift high-quality school bags to the children. School bags are items of intense usage and miss-use, and often the cheaper versions tend to fall to pieces before the end of the first term of school.
The school supply company De Jagers was approached, and they kindly provided 25 high-quality school bags at a very competitive price, for which we are extremely grateful.
This might not have been an ‘exciting’ Christmas gift for these kids, but it is something of more value and practical application, and they will no doubt be the envy of many of their school friends with their tough and solid school bags on their backs.
