Charities benefit from the arts
Students from a local art school in Alberton gave up their time and their paintings to support and financially assist two charity organizations in town.
RACEVIEW – The Art Centre donated a total of R43 000, raised at the Perfect Moments Charity Art Exhibition held last week, to Stepping Stone Hospice & Care Services and the Epic Foundation. Each of the two charities received their donations at an official handing over at Raceview Motors on Thursday evening.
The Epic Foundation, whose main objective is the management of various projects and initiatives aimed at assisting victims of rape and abuse, will use some of the funds to start off various skills development programmes in January next year for women in shelters. But for now, says founding member Alta McMaster, funds will also be used to double the amount of comfort bags to be supplied to Victim Empowerment Centres and trauma centres during November and December. “Funding will be used to buy any items we might not have enough of to complete the bags,” she says.
The newly founded Stepping Stone Hospice & Care Services in New Market Park has indicated that their funds will be used mainly for the purchase of some immediate medical supplies. This hospice is the first-ever service of this kind in the Greater Alberton area. Traditionally Alberton community was serviced by Wits Hospice in Houghton and East Rand Hospice in Benoni.
Stepping Stone Hospice & Care Services celebrated the official opening of their building on the AMCARE premises in New Market Park some three weeks ago. Says Tersia Burger, co-founder and chairperson of the Steering Committee, “Our facilities include home-based care facilities, day care facilities, an In-Patient Unit for the terminally ill in their last days and family bereavement counselling. We receive no government funding and are totally reliant upon the generosity of the community, public sector and fundraising events.”
The Art Centre has been supporting various charities since 2010 when students donated 22 paintings to a Durban based organization ‘Every one counts’. In 2011, the first Perfect Moment Exhibition was held in Alberton and monies raised were donated to Animals in Distress and St Francis Orphanage.
Sanchi Leibach, who owns the Art Centre and teaches her students to paint and draw, explains that all her students are amateur artists. “The youngest artist who donated a work is 14 years old and my oldest student is just over 70 years old. We sold 87 paintings and raised just over R43 000 at the exhibition.
“To me the event is a wonderful example of what can be achieved if people are given the opportunity to make a difference – The community doing it for the community,” says Sanchi.
