Ann Braine, Class of 1964 & Tanya Harvey, Class of 1984

Receiving a donation from the LEH Be Bold Fund has given us such encouragement!

Hillcrest Advice Bureau and Bursary Fund has been active in the poverty-stricken peri-urban areas around Hillcrest, on the Western fringe of Durban, South Africa, since 1972, but remained largely unknown among the local community. Nearly all our funding is earmarked for specific projects. The Be Bold grant was needed to promote the organisation and raise awareness in the community.

Thanks to the exchange rate and the hard work of our staff and volunteers we were able to stretch the donation to cover much of our shopping list. The money arrived in time for us to buy branded golf shirts and T-shirts with our vision statement ‘A Better South Africa One Degree At a Time…’ as well as posters and leaflets to distribute in a busy shopping mall on Giving Tuesday, 28 November 2023. Many people stopped to chat to us and the student beneficiaries we invited to assist us, and we added to our mailing list as well as raising money towards school uniforms.

This year we wore our T-shirts every time we interfaced with the public, be it our fortnightly Drop-In where we meet up with students we are supporting as well as those who would like us to support them, or our visits to schools to hand out uniforms bringing pride to indigent children, or career workshops held at critical points in learners’ school careers. This makes our team recognisable by staff and learners alike and gives us all a real sense of belonging to a larger organisation.

The boosted Facebook posts have done remarkably well, with the most recent reaching nearly 35,000 Facebook accounts, most within a 25 mile radius of our home base, with an amazing 7,872 engagements and 4,560 photo views. People signed up on our mailing list, asked questions and we have gained new volunteers and new donors.

We are saving the last of the money for a Facebook post ahead of Giving Tuesday, to encourage people to touch base with us in the shopping malls and to volunteer or donate either cash or superseded smart phones and laptops that we can pass on to the tertiary students we support.

The value we have received from the grant has been significantly greater than its monetary value. We have been able to test out approaches that might previously have been seen as ‘frivolous expenditure’ and found them to be really effective. We are certainly better known in our home turf than we were a year ago, and I think the team is all convinced of the value of making some money available for this sort of investment.

We’d love to keep in touch with our old school! Tanya is now based in Poole, so a visit is not out of the question. We’d also love it if other alumnae (and not just those who remember us) would take the time to check out our website www.habandbf.co.za and Facebook and Instagram pages, or even visit us if in Durban.

Tanya Harvey (Stone: class of 1984) and Ann Braine (Freemantle: class of 1965