Zimbabwe Ski Team - Official Website

In 2004...

In 2004 the Z.S.T. is raising money for an orphanage and a retirement home in Southern Zimbabwe (Matabeleland Region). The recent Zimbabwe Ski Team Ball at the Sutton Law Tennis Club in Dublin, Ireland raised over 2000 Euro for these two charities, may thanks to all who attended and generoulsy contributed. The money will be delivered personally to these charities in June 2004 by Zimbabwe Ski Team members. Once again we guarantee that NO MONEY will go to the Government but DIRECTLY INTO THE HANDS OF THESE ORGANISATIONS. Thank you for your continued support."

Our Charities in 2004 were:

St. Francis Home
S.O.A.P (Save our Old Age Pensioners)

S.O.A.P.(Supporting Old Age Pensioners)

'concerned citizens who hope to make a difference'.

Tel: 242455 Louise Campbell/242486 Dave Gill

P. O. Box AC 646 ASCOT BULAWAYO ZIMBABWE

E-MAIL: scallywags@netconnect.co.zw

During the early part of 2002 it was noticed by John Osborne auctioneers that elderly people were bringing small items into the auction rooms for sale. After speaking to various people it was realised that these pensioners were unable due to high inflation rates, to make ends meet and, had to sell their meagre possessions to enable them to buy basic food.

Around April of 2002, 2 ladies, Pat Donzelli and Lyn Abbot formed the organisation known as Supporting Old Age Pensioners or SOAP.

I received details via e-mail and asked parents at our nursery school if they would donate cash or goods. I first took donations in May 2002 and offered my services to Lyn should they be required. By September I was delivering monthly food parcels to recipients, who, through no fault of their own, after saving and providing for their retirement now found that they were unable to buy even everyday basics.

Imagine, if you can, a person having retired in mid 1999 on a reasonable pension of say $5,000 a month; Bread loaf $8 0 Milk 500ml $8 Electricity month $1,100 2ltrs Mazoe Orange $33 1 litre coke $21 local stamp $1:20c 500g butter $75:90c tin tuna $26:18c 200 Tea bags $60:81c months 'phone rental $126:20c

500gms steak mince $40:75 500 gms stew beef $42:50

9 toilet rolls $58:88

$1,602:42

At this time it is reasonable to assume this same pension has now increased to around $80,000.

. In those early days 'my' delivery round took about 80 minutes to complete. Now, it covers around 70 k's (44 miles) and takes 5 hours. As time passed I became more involved and started to interview likely recipients for Lyn. Pat Donzelli moved to South Africa.

Lyn suffered from emphysema for years and at the end of June 2004, sadly passed away. Louise Campbell took over the office work and SOAP continued as before, although, it is fair to say we have been on a bit of a learning curve ever since!

In March 2005, due to business commitments, Lyn's husband Pete decided that he was unable to assist with the running of SOAP. We transferred the office work to Louise's own home at Whitestone Way and later our storage shed was also moved from Clarke Road to her home. I myself am based at Whitman Road in Malindela. Besides office work, Louise packs all the parcels herself (no mean feat) and also delivers to homes in Bulawayo north, I deliver to Bulawayo south. Trish and Shirley deliver to Coronation Cottages and Martie covers Garden Park and two outside addresses. The key thing here is reliability, as we deliver EVERY second Wednesday of each and every month without fail, throughout the year.

We are given names of possible recipients from the general public and once a month, usually a week before our delivery date, I call and interview each and every person whose name we have been given and each cased is assessed on its own merits. Occasionally an urgent case is found and we can usually get a food parcel delivered within a couple of hours. At the moment we are packing parcels for 184 individuals and deliver in the low density suburbs to individual homes, also to Coronation Cottages, Garden Park and Masonic Lodges. At the moment this list increases by about 4 or 5 names monthly. Although we do not deliver to establishments that have food supplied, we do offer any surplus perishable food to places such as Jacaranda house, Garden Park guest house, Barbara Burrell and other residential homes in Bulawayo.

During this past year there has been an umbrella organisation set up called the Bulawayo Help Network where we share information between ourselves and can call on other organisations to help with rents, medicines and medical. This has proved to be a blessing as we at SOAP often come across desperate medical cases too.

Those that often need most assistance are Railway pensioners as the pension can be a pittance and their medical aid usually doesn't cover life saving drugs.

Interviewing can be an experience in itself. A couple of years ago I came across one couple whose staple diet was, believe or not, 'black jacks' (weeds) and figs growing in the garden. One more recent case is a couple, he retired at the end of 2004 after 25 years service with ZESA and has a pension of just Z$530,000 (66p, R6) a month. His wife has had radical facial surgery for cancer losing all her nose, skin, bone and teeth. They owe R260,000 (£22,600) in medical bills. They also have a daughter living at home who failed exams and is doing a computer course. Our eldest recipient turned 100 in August and we had one lady who has now moved to SA receiving a NSSA pension of just Z$700 (0.0009p, R0.012c) a month. It is often the case that the people we support are old enough to have retired sons and daughters who are unable to help.

Although we haven't checked recently, in May our costs were in the region of Z$1,000,000,000 (£1,250. R16,200) each month. We exist solely with the donations of cash and kind from mainly the public and businesses of Bulawayo. It is only with people like YOU that we are able to continue our work. Louise and myself are totally committed to SOAP and we are both determined that it will long continue.

Thank you once again on behalf of all our recipients.

Louise Campbell and Dave Gill.