| South Africa Orphan
Benefit KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Author Neale Donald Walsch will be the keynote speaker on March 20 at a benefit to support the Novalis Orphan Care Project in South Africa, to provide education and housing within a caring community to children orphaned by AIDS. The event, sponsored by The Light Center of Baldwin, Kan., begins at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 20, with a silent auction and reception at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 47th and Jefferson, in Kansas City, Mo. The event includes entertainment by local musicians Greg Tamblyn and Bukeka Shoals. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and they are on sale at Wild Oats, Overland Park, The Good Book (Unity on the Plaza bookstore) or call The Light Center at (785) 255-4583, e-mail ltcenter@grapevine.net or visit www.lightcenterks.org. If you have something to donate, contact The Light Center. The Novalis Orphan Care Project is a cooperative project of service partners in South Africa. Projects under way to help children orphaned by AIDS are: ¥ SOS Children's Village in Mpumalanga -- already constructed and ready to house children. ¥ Sinekhaya Children's Home -- to be constructed by the Unity Center of Love and Light in Soweto. ¥ Ecabazini in Pietermaritzberg -- a model Zulu village offering training for children about traditional Zulu lifestyle, building and gardening. ¥ The Light Center, Baldwin, Kan. -- training volunteers to travel to South Africa to assist in partner projects. Also will create apprenticeships for older South African youth. The Novalis Institute in Cape Town was inspired by the work of Rudolph Steiner and was founded to bring spiritual values embracing the Good, the Beautiful and the True into community life through holistic education, training and management interventions in all areas of social and cultural development. Its mission is encapsulated in the African word Ubuntu, which means that it takes a village to raise a child. For more than 20 years, Novalis has been providing creative and inspirational learning programs for teachers, trainers and community leaders throughout South Africa and Zimbabwe. Its work in poor schools throughout South Africa includes music, arts and whole foods gardens, as well as whole school development programs. Novalis is instrumental in the formation of the Strategic National Action Plan (SNAP), an organization that will bring together agencies from throughout South Africa to create a national strategy to ensure that appropriate care is available to all children in distress. SNAP met for the first time on December 12 to begin the process of planning for the estimated 2 to 6 million orphans expected to need care by 2013. Novalis is a heart-centered agency with a guiding principle of promoting unconditional love. |
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Feb 2004 |
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