2026 Winter update
A Legacy of Value: 35 Years of Shared Humanity
“You can add time to your life, but it’s more important to add value.”
At Botshibelo Community Development Trust (BCDT), this philosophy has guided the Cloete family, our trustees, and our managers for over three decades. But more importantly, it’s the philosophy you, our donors, have turned into reality for the villagers and families we serve. Together, we provide something essential: a permanent shift in the value of day-to-day life.
Little Thembi - now an IT graduate involved in project work. An example of adding value to one’s life.
Closing the School, but Redefining the Mission: The Liberation of BCDT
Closing the MGS village school was a difficult but necessary evolution for BCDT. The school was merely one arm of our organization, yet it consumed an inordinate amount of our time and financial resources, heavily weighed down by teachers' salaries and endless operational costs. The government’s insultingly small subsidy failed to meet basic needs, and our international sponsors expressed a strong desire to channel their funds into more direct, targeted areas of child and youth care.
Accordingly, we made the strategic decision to hand general education back to the government and pivot our energy toward crucial poverty alleviation work where the state fails. This includes the vital, underfunded spaces of permanent and emergency housing, food security, clean water access, medical care for HIV/AIDS and chronic conditions, animal welfare, and the protection of vulnerable women and youth.
By lifting the school’s massive burden from our shoulders, BCDT has found the time and breathing room to flourish. We still fiercely protect our children's futures. But now we achieve it through targeted after-school, weekend, and holiday interventions, focusing on homework support, research projects, and accelerating reading levels. Most excitingly, this newfound freedom means our Containers of Hope initiative can finally begin to function fully, allowing us to pour our energy into teaching the urgent, practical skills our youth need to survive.
The True Measure of Value: Choni’s Story
This safety net was vividly felt this past month through the life of Choni, a single mother of three young boys who grew up within the BCDT village.
Despite an exhausting work week, Choni dressed her boys and walked to the local church’s evening service. Shortly after arriving, a commotion broke out outside. Choni ran out to find her shack engulfed in flames.
Within minutes, her earthly possessions vanished into ash. Yet, as she stood watching the smoke rise, holding her three boys tight against her, she realized everything she could ever work to replace was gone, but everything that was truly irreplaceable was safe in her arms. It was a moment of having nothing yet possessing everything.
Little remains of Choni’s home
The village immediately stood by her side, reminding her that her family’s lives had been spared, and that she had the strength to continue. We also want to extend a massive, heartfelt shout-out to our Lyderhorn Norwegian sponsors, whose immediate financial support is already helped Choni rebuild her home and replace what was lost.
Moving Beyond Shacks: A Life-Saving Transition
Shack fires are not isolated accidents; they are a recurring disaster with immeasurable personal costs. Years ago, during a devastating settlement fire, we stood helplessly without the resources to save a dear friend. It is an image that is impossible to unsee, and a tragedy we refuse to let happen again.
On average in South Africa, at least 10 shack fires occur every single day, destroying irreplaceable lives, memories, and families' entire life savings in minutes.
The Containers of Hope Project: A Permanent Foundation for Safety
At BCDT, we are determined to break this cycle. We need your help to launch the accommodation aspect of Containers of Hope. Our goal is to erect a converted, second-hand shipping container on each property within the village. Crucially, these structures are a permanent investment in the land itself; whether a specific family thrives and moves on, or a new family in crisis moves in, BCDT will always have a safe, secure home waiting for them.
By transitioning our families into fire-resistant container homes, we aren't just providing temporary shelter, we are providing absolute safety, dignity, and a future free from fear.
The Courage to Be Broken
Our role as caretakers is to provide a nuanced support. BCDT is a sanctuary where it is a safe place to keep growing even while feeling ‘broken.’ We recognize the journey of fixing one’s life often co-exists with the pain of past wounds.
This brokenness is not unique to the villagers we serve; it belongs to the founding members, the Cloete family, our volunteers, and our management team as well.
Every leader administering BCDT works in the shadow of their own experiences. Often, while handling a crisis, a situation hits too close to that shadow, and a team member must step away or unashamedly weep for the victims. We do not hide this.
Healing is a work in progress for all of us. But hope is our powerful elixir. Hope is magical; a single drop is enough to kickstart a broken heart and provide the strength to continue. To keep going “just for today”.
L: A smile, and a birthday cake are always linked to hope.
R: Never too early to learn about litter with your baby gang
BCDT tries to offer a platform of non-judgement. We are not here to impose “fixes” based on outside perceptions of what a life should look like. We are here to offer our youth a different example of adult care, compassion, and consistency as an alternative to what they have known. We do this without asking kids to abandon respect for their own parents, many of whom may not have had the resources, support, or emotional tools needed to provide a different level of care. One of BCDT’s greatest gifts is teaching us that we can witness suffering with compassion, and without surrendering our own boundaries.
Measuring the Immeasurable
This partnership of compassion was beautifully visible in recent visits from both long-standing and new supporters. Some brought joy to the children with a braai, essential donations, and the kind of presence that makes children feel seen and celebrated. Others spent days working with care and energy, repairing and refurbishing the children’s playground, fixing gutters, bringing winter blankets, and offering many other forms of practical support. They also treated some of our little ones to a magical outing at the game park and arrived with clothing, food, and an abundance of love for everyone at BCDT. Together, these partners represent far more than funding: they represent a multi-generational commitment to feeding, educating, protecting, and creating safety for future generations
Uno works out how a giraffe smiles
Flowers in the flowers
The deepest moments are not always the loudest. They happen quietly, between the activities, when the past and present stand side by side. Children who were once in crisis are now adults: employed, thriving, and providing for their own families. Watching our visitors interact with them as equals was moving. One moment captured this legacy with breathtaking clarity: a long-time supporter standing before a young woman she had once held as a dying infant, when HIV/AIDS had placed her life in the balance. To see that child now approach her as a healthy, confident, independent adult left her beyond words. It was a measure not simply of survival, but of a life fully reclaimed.
The Net That Catches Us: Strength in the Face of Loss
This resilience, built through years of consistent support, was recently put to the ultimate test. We were called to a home in the village where a young mother had passed away in her sleep, her children beside her.
In that moment of impossible grief, her eldest son found the strength to stay on his feet. Yet, even while feeling as if he were dying inside, he reached out to comfort his younger siblings with great compassion, and found the inner strength to bury and honour his beloved mom. BCDT tries to instill the life lesson that your own personal boundaries should remain strong and intact regardless of the stories around you.
A Foundation of Security
Where does a young person find such strength? We believe it is grown in the soil of security. This type of courage is nearly impossible to find when a family is moving from farm to farm, homeless and hopeless. It is nurtured when a family has a small piece of land to call their own, a place where they can sleep without the fear of eviction or the burden of rent.
By providing an organized, professional management system, BCDT ensures that this ‘home’ is governed by values:
• Safety: A zero-tolerance policy for gender-based violence and physical abuse.
• Respect: Protection for the animals and the environment we share.
• Stability: A permanent platform that gives families the hope to grow into the future.
A brand new Botshibelian living in safety
Waiting for my success to start
The Safety Net
When life becomes so painful that a teenager feels that life is hopeless, the BCDT net is there. We are there to catch them and help them try again—and again—until they find their own inherent strength.
Thirty-five years have taught us that while life can be devastating, nothing can truly destroy the ‘you’ inside. Every child is unique; many don’t want a ‘hand-up’ or a ‘handout’, they simply need a hand to hold, and find balance, as they navigate their own journey. That hand was what allowed us, as a village, to gather the courage to bury a mother and a friend. We stood together to hold the grieving children, proving that even when belief and part of hope are ripped away by tragedy, the community remains. Because of your partnership, these children did not have to face the unthinkable alone.
Lerato & Maki (her mother was holding her in Angels in the Dust) rebuilding their lineages
2026: A Year of Shared Triumphs and Human Connections
The Scaffolding of Village Administration
A safe village requires leadership, structure, boundaries, and daily care. Under Leigh’s dedicated hand, and with the support of our village committee, BCDT’s day-to-day operations continue to grow stronger. Their work includes regular meetings, disciplinary hearings, conflict resolution, utility management, and the sustainable development of the village. It is demanding, often thankless work, but it is the scaffolding that holds the community together. Through active management of noise, litter, utilities, and shared conduct, and through firm zero-tolerance policies on substance abuse, gender-based violence, child abuse, and animal cruelty, BCDT has created a haven of stability. This stability has changed how the wider community sees our villagers. Local businesses now hire them with confidence, knowing they have secure housing and a structured home environment. Nearly all our adults are employed in and around the village.
Rethinking Education: Beyond the Academic Path
Every child permanently residing in our village is enrolled in a nearby school. (We are navigating the re-entry of a newly arrived family whose son had fallen out of the system).
Thanks to the national school feeding schemes providing daily nutrition, primary school absenteeism is very low. For most of our students too, this vital scheme serves as a crucial food gap intervention—greatly assisting with any food deficit they face at home. Furthermore, by ensuring the children are fed at school, this government project indirectly relieves the pressure on families, allowing the limited food available at home to stretch further for the elderly, the youth, and the adults.
Sadly, reducing the high school dropout rate remains a struggle due to deep-seated social challenges and learning differences. This is where our Containers of Hope initiative must expand. We are designing a tailored vocational youth program for those unable to follow an academic path. We need to teach practical skills tailored to our local economy, empowering them to financial self-sufficiency.
A woman of many talents - Sisi shares her time between working in a nearby restaurant, and plumbing repair at BCDT
Lucas has found his economic niche to support himself – water deliverer.
Breaking the Chain: Kyle’s Triumph Over History
To truly measure the weight of Kyle holding his Matric certificate in 2026, you must look backward, deep into the soil of our past.
During the dark decades of apartheid, life for black families on farms was a cycle of severe, unremitting hardship. Labor was gruelling, rights were non-existent, and education was treated by the state as a dangerous luxury. For generations, the children of these farms were caught in a system designed to keep them on their knees.
When the pressures of rural hardship or forced evictions finally pushed young people out of the fields and into the unfamiliar, chaotic sprawl of cities and towns, a quiet tragedy occurred. In the frantic struggle to survive the labyrinth of apartheid pass laws, township migrations, and shifting informal settlements, family and social connections snapped.
Kyle’s family was caught in this exact historical fracture. Over the years, they lost all contact with their roots. They do not know where their mother’s people originated, nor do they have a single link to his father’s ancestral home. Their family history was effectively erased.
But history does not get the final word.
This year, Kyle stood on the shoulders of those silent, hardworking ancestors who suffered in the dust of the farms. With fierce determination, he became the very first person in his family lineage to matriculate.
Where the past brought dislocation and closed doors, Kyle has built a bridge to the future. He has anchored a family tree that was once drifting, giving it new, deep roots of achievement and dignity. His certificate is a declaration of hope that the cycle of generational poverty is officially broken. We could not be prouder of you, Kyle, you are the proof that a single drop of hope, watered by resilience, can grow a future out of the hardest ground.
The Soup Kitchen: Feeding the Soul (and Learning to Cook)
Our food storeroom empties faster than we can fill it. Keeping families fed from one Saturday to the next remains one of our most urgent struggles, and we ask you to please keep supporting this vital feeding scheme.
Lines from the soup kitchen container
As we mentioned previously, we have shifted from one large central cooking pot to smaller, collaborative cooking groups. This makes the food taste better, but importantly, it also teaches our children how to cook. Of course, this system comes with its own unique village risks, we all tread carefully on the days an angry teenager is on kitchen duty. We can confirm that ‘angry food’ tastes distinctly angry!
Mathematics, Water, and the Elixir of Poetry
Some of BCDT’s long-standing supporters embody generosity in its most personal and practical form. This year, for a first-time visit, offering not only financial help, but also their time, skills, and energy. One retired accountant spent his visit tutoring our senior students and purchasing calculators for them. The result was extraordinary: for the first time in our history, every student in the group passed their term maths exams. 10
Graham’s rainwater harvesting system
But this visit also brought a more unusual, ethereal gift into our lives: poetry.
Every morning, we would meet for coffee to discuss the heavy, daily realities of BCDT: the lack of water, the food shortages, and the resident village dog who had taken a very personal dislike to one particular visitor, routinely waiting in ambush to bite him in a rather sensitive, unmentionable location.
Somehow, amid all the chaos, he found space each morning to softly recite a poem for us. Philip Schultz once wrote, “Poetry is what happens when your mind stops and your heart and soul do the talking.” Thank you for giving our minds permission to stop, even briefly, and for nourishing our souls. You reminded us, at exactly the right time, of the breathtaking beauty of humanity.
Ethan explaining BCDT living to Amira
Ethan explaining BCDT living to Amira
The Reality of Our Elements: The Water Crisis True to this same hands-on spirit, support was also offered to design and build a vital rainwater-harvesting system. For BCDT, this kind of infrastructure is lifesaving. Our village relies on municipal water trucks to make an unpredictable weekly delivery to fill several 5,000 litre tanks scattered throughout the village. That fragile supply must cover hygiene, bathing, cooking, washing, cleaning, and survival gardens for the entire village. The result is that water, one of life’s most basic necessities, has become one of our most urgent daily crises. Harvesting and storing the rainwater from the roof of the village school will add a significant safety buffer for the entire village.
How You Can Stand Beside Us
As we lok ahead through 2026, the BCDT safety net remains open, but we cannot hold it alone. We invite our global family of supporters to look at our village and consider where your unique gifts may fit best: through financial donations for our Containers of Hope and Soup Kitchen, support with accommodation, transport, animal outreach, after-school homework, IT skills and projects, networking, or the generous sharing of your professional skills.
One drop of hope can restart a heart; a community of hope can change a family lineage forever. Thank you for walking beside us on this extraordinary journey