Death of Seed of Hope programme leader
During lockdown she led the distribution of food parcels to elderly women.
Amid all the Covid-19 challenges thrown at them, Seed of Hope (SOH) staff members are also mourning the death of one of their longstanding colleagues, Gloria Xaba, who had been with the Bhekuwandle NPO since 2003.
“Gloria experienced challenges with her health and that led to her death. She joined the team at the very beginning as a volunteer, helping those who were sick to get medical care at home or taking them to the hospital. She also delivered food parcels and clothing to families in crisis,” said SOH’s Heather Liebenberg.
“For many years she headed up our social services department, helping people apply for their identity documents to qualify for anti-retro viral treatment and grants, as well as referring them to other organisations when required. She was also very passionate about caring for the elderly people in the community.”
In 2018, her dream was fulfilled when SOH started its elderly empowerment programme. Each week, about forty gogos (grandmothers) from the community came to share, learn, laugh, cry, and pray together, which resulted in many incredible stories of answered prayers. Gloria encouraged them with small business ideas, such as making beautiful items out of recycled plastic bags to sell, as well as second-hand clothing.
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During lockdown she led the distribution of food parcels to ensure the elderly women who are part of SOH’s programmes were taken care of. “As an organisation we always encourage people to do what they can to improve their situations. This led us to include seed packages in our food parcels. In just three to five weeks, we started seeing results of abundant harvests from the elderly women who were part of Gloria’s programme.
Our Gloria will be dearly missed and we are so grateful to Buli Cele who has stepped up and offered to run with the elderly empowerment programme – she has been such a light to our gogos and was a great friend to Gloria.”
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