TWICE a year, alumni of St Henry’s Marist College work with the Marist Brothers and Sisters of Mercy in the Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape, helping the poor and sick in the formal and informal townships and schools. This area is one of the poorest and most disadvantaged in the country. In winter, temperatures drop below zero and most families have no electricity and very little water. On previous visits, the alumni have cleared thick bush, constructed new playground apparatus for the children at the local schools and collected and distributed clothes and toys. Many of the local children were never registered at birth and so are unable to obtain identity books. This makes securing places in school extremely difficult and so the past students from St Henry’s have launched an initiative called “Operation Cup Cake” to raise funds to enable these children to get these vital documents. The present pupils at the College held a Civvies Day to raise funds and the Prep School students ran a cup-cake sale to swell the funds for the ID Book drive.
