By Andrea Cohen
Posted May 31, 2006

If I put my ear to the computer screen, I can hear the murmuring from all the way over here in South Africa...."It's been so long since we've heard news about Zamimpilo! What's happening over there?"

So here I am...finally, with lots of important news for you. This will be long, but there are many details that I want to pass along to you, beginning with an explanation of why this news has been so long in coming your way. As you will read, this has been a time of significant transition for Zamimpilo, and it's taken quite some time for the outcome to become clear.

As many of you know, Zamimpilo is a facility that came into being to meet the needs of children from a very poor area of South Africa who had lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. The center has been run by Faith Mthethwa, a woman from the community who has given tirelessly of herself to provide food, shelter and care for the children. Working with only a run-down building, a valiant group of community volunteers and virtually no regular funding or government support, she has managed for more than three years to provide emergency shelter for 86 children and daily meals for almost 100 others. As you can imagine, this has been virtually a 24/7 job for Faith, which she has done for no pay whatsoever.

In the later part of 2005, it became apparent that Faith was becoming physically exhausted from the monumental task she had undertaken at Zamimpilo. In response to this, a meeting was organized with Faith and a number of concerned individuals and organizations in an effort to look at how Zamimpilo was functioning, and explore how the center could operate more effectively....to maintain the well-being of the volunteer staff, and to ensure that these children, who had already suffered such trauma in their young lives, would continue to be safe and well cared for.

One of the attendees was a representative from an organization called NOAH, which stands for "Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity." Since 2000, NOAH has successfully trained community leaders and organized "Arks" in 70 communities in South Africa to care for their HIV/AIDS orphaned children. Arks are non-residential resource centers that help to place children in homes in the community (either with members of their extended family or with other caring community members). The Ark monitors the children's' care with home visits, and provides day-long care for pre-schoolers and after-school care and services to school-age children, including counseling, a balanced daily meal, skills training, homework supervision, computers, library and sports and recreation facilities. The ark also supports the adopting families with food and necessary parcels, school fees, uniforms, etc., with grants from NOAH and Ark sponsors. In addition, because the centers are non-residential, they receive government social welfare grants and are able to continue to reach out and provide services to newly orphaned children in the community.

At the meeting, the NOAH representative invited Faith to attend a week-long leader training workshop in November. In December, I received a phone call with the terrible news that Faith had suffered a stroke.

Faith survived the stroke (she is one tough cookie!), but remained in the hospital for nearly a month. During that time, I contacted Niven Postma, the executive director of NOAH to see if it might be possible for the group to provide ongoing assistance to Zamimpilo. She visited the center shortly after Faith returned to work, and found that many important building blocks of a NOAH Ark - a community board, trained director, volunteer staff and working garden - were already in place at Zamimpilo.

Less than a month ago, I received the wonderful news that NOAH had decided to "adopt" Zamimpilo as its newest Ark! Zamimpilo was immediately assigned an "ark-builder" - a marvelous fellow named Tshepo, who has already set to work with Faith on many important tasks. First and most important - homes have been found for all the children who were living at Zamimpilo. The children now come daily to Zamimpilo, but return to their homes to sleep. Tshepo and Faith are developing a budget and an operating plan for the center. Now that we know that Zamimpilo's future is secure, the Josh Groban Foundation has resumed funding the construction of a large playground, enclosure fence and security gate, which is now underway.

This is all very, very good news for the Zamimpilo kids. NOAH was organized in response to the project that by 2015 there will be between two and three million orphaned children in South Africa. There will never be enough resources to care for these children in residential "orphanage" settings, and in fact research has shown that the children raised in such settings have many behavioral problems and often fare poorly as adults. NOAH's helping South African communities to help themselves by providing support and assistance to establish long-term care for this ever-growing number of traumatized children. The children will now receive many more services than they did when they lived at the center, and they are now a part of family environments with a much more secure future ahead of them.

So what does all this mean for the Josh Groban Foundation, and for all of you who have given so generously to help the Zamimpilo kids? The adoption of Zamimpilo as a NOAH Ark is nothing but good news for us as well. It means that Zamimpilo will continue to receive support and oversight long after I have left South Africa in the summer of 2007, and that we may continue to make contributions to Zamimpilo through NOAH, who will administer our funding and ensure that it is properly spent. The Foundation will continue to designate funds for the projects of its choosing. Many of the Arks have official sponsors, and the Josh Groban Foundation is now the official sponsor of Zamimpilo.

NOAH will be of great assistance in distributing your handmade blankets to the Zamimpilo kids in their homes. There will be many new opportunities for contributing to Zamimpilo as it evolves from an emergency shelter to a resource center, with educational, recreational and counseling facilities. We will have more info on this as soon as the center's operating plan is complete, which should be quite soon.

You should feel very proud in knowing that your support of Zamimpilo has enabled the center to evolve into a facility with a bright future, which will in turn be able to provide a much brighter future to the wonderful Zamimpilo kids.

I would encourage you all to take a look at the NOAH website at www.noahorphans.org.za to learn more about our new partners and the wonderful work they are doing. Zamimpilo isn't listed there yet, but it will be very soon. And look forward to much more news from me!