Reflecting on successes!

South African law requires registered charities to submit annual reports including audited financial statements and a narrative report at the end of every year. Papillon has done this every year since their registration in 2002.

Although Papillon actually started in 2000, the first year and a half were used to build community trust and to establish a going concern.
This post is to give you a brief look at one of the projects titled "Merci Flight" that was started in 2002.
Come have a look!

Merci flight means that we load our car with food parcels and drive around looking for desperate people!

The trip is not planned as the aim is to be led to bring unexpected joy to the receiver and the giver!
This guy had no idea about what was coming to him.

Pure unexpected joy out of the blue!

A lovely park here that once hosted royalty now hosts the poor!
Poor people live under the trees.

A family of 4 live here in this homemade shelter!

And of course they are overjoyed with the gifts!
This is not from Christmas, as this is from our hearts!
That's why we wait every year until after Christmas before we do the trip.

Many a mile was travelled and many a smile was raised!

Some wanted their photo taken and others refused.
The one guy said to me that if we publish their photos, we will get more things to bring to them.

And then the Merci Flight trip ended today until the next year end.

Note that this is not an attempt to boast about what we do, as we do a lot more personal stuff that is never published.
However Papillon is a charity and most charities across the world face a continued struggle to survive. There is no government funding and things are getting worse by the day.

But we simply continue to build on the rock of our faith and not on shifting sands.

Of course we are going to face much worse in the near future, as they say that South Africa has the highest unemployment figure in the world.
Have a look at this snippet;

"The youth aged 15–24 years are the most vulnerable in the South African labour market as the unemployment rate among this age group was 55,2% in the 1st quarter of 2019. Among graduates in this age group, the unemployment rate was 31,0% during this period compared to 19,5% in the 4th quarter of 2018 – an increase of 11,4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter. However, the graduate unemployment rate is still lower than the rate among those with other educational levels, meaning that education is still the key to these young people’s prospects improving in the South African labour market".

Source; http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12121

This is why Papillon places computers in rural farm schools. Education is indeed the key to improvement!

We hope you enjoyed the introduction to one of the @papilloncharity projects.