In our over three decades of working to bring lasting change to Alex, we have seen many generous donors and partners knock on our doors to find out how they can be of service to us and the community at large.
Tiffy Safety is one that will remain close to our hearts for many years to come, having donated the building that it used to manufacture PPE gear and equipment for many, many years to Rays of Hope. As a result of Covid-19 and a lack of regulations around PPE gear quality standards, Tiffy Safety could not compete with the rate of cheaper PPE imports into the country and was unfortunately forced to close its doors after four decades in the business.
As a tribute to the Ellis family and in gratitude for their wonderful donation to Rays of Hope and Alex, we would like to share a message from Debbie, the daughter of Eilleen and the late Rob Ellis who the building belonged to.
“Our family business has been in Marlboro, on the edge of Alexandra Township, for the past 40 years. As the demographics of the area have changed over the last two decades, we realised that if we move from our building, it would very quickly become hijacked and overrun with illegal squatters. We have therefore been following a number of ministry initiatives that friends and churches close to our heart have been doing in Alex with the view to handing the building over to them.
It has been our desire to see the building used as a beacon of light from which the Gospel can go forth in a very needy community. It has also been a longstanding dream specifically, to reach out to the children of the community. We have envisioned a library filled with beautiful books, reading to little ones and laying strong literacy and learning foundations that can set the children around us up for future success.
We are therefore very excited to partner with Rays of Hope by providing the building for their dream to start a school for the children in the community. We see this as an answer to our prayers and are excited to see what the Lord will accomplish in this place and through His people.”
The conversion to a school will take a great deal of planning and, of course, funding, and we appeal to our partners, local Sandton businesses and generous individuals to please help in any way possible. We would be grateful for donations of anything from classroom equipment, books and other learning resources to infrastructure development support.
Please contact Tracey Pepper at tracey@raysofhope.co.za to chat further.
