Letter from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
November 18, 2007
Dear Friends,
I am delighted to participate in this important endeavor. Your support here today will make a tangible difference in the lives of many South Africans. It will enable this foundation to continue supporting education, financial empowerment and leadership training among women and youth in the townships of Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The staff of Project People Foundation have worked tirelessly for over a decade – through our transition from apartheid to democracy and now in the rise of the AIDS pandemic. I commend them for their commitment. PPF continues to position itself in response to South Africa’s most urgent needs. Those needs are becoming more critical each day. We need your help.
Black women, often caring for their children alone, have the highest unemployment rates in the country and when they are hired, their income is the lowest of all other race and gender groups. The poverty of many of our people is exacerbated by the second highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. 900 South Africans are dying every day from HIV/AIDS related causes and there are over one million South African AIDS orphans.
Your support today is bringing hope into this desperate situation. The Project People Foundation is making a difference. Join me in helping to realize God’s dream to make this world a place of compassion, of caring, of sharing. Our sisters and brothers are hurting. Support the outstanding work of Project People Foundation and let us realize God’s dream together.
God bless you,
Desmond M. Tutu
Archbishop Emeritus
Letter from Fikile Magubane, South African Consulate-General
18 April 2007
Project People Foundation
The Hon. Rev. Linda Tarry-Chard
490 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10027
Dear Rev. Tarry-Chard,
The relationship between Project People Foundation and South Africa began over 11 years ago in 1995 with the Black Doll Project. Over 15,000 dolls were sent to SA in a single year and were distributed to children in the townships who had never seen dolls in their likeness before.
Project People Foundation is dedicated to changing lives on the African and American continent and the Celebrating Life: Concert Series is a way for the foundation to make this possible. The foundation has touched the lives of South Africans, old and young alike in so many ways. We are grateful for their continued work in South Africa and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Project People Foundation on the work it has embarked on in South Africa.
Thank you for reaching out to people in South Africa with the many projects that the Project People Foundation has undertaken. IT is through the support of organizations such as The Project People Foundation that South Africa will secure its future and development.
The Project People Foundation truly represents the principles of Batho Pele (creating a better life for all South Africans and putting people first.)
I wish to thank you for your support and friendship.
Yours Sincerely,
FIKILE MAGUBANE
CONSUL GENERAL
Charlayne Hunter-Gault Remarks
CNN South African Correspondent, Charlayne Hunter-Gault served as Honorary Patron for PPF’s Celebrating Life Concert in St. Louis.
I know these are difficult times for Americans, but I want to just say that however difficult they may be there, you need but walk the paths I walk everyday to see how much more dreadful life is for people here, especially women and children. With the exception of those who have been the beneficiaries of the generosity and dedication of organizations likes yours, there has been no rising tide to lift the boats of the millions of women and children like the one I saw today as I went to buy my groceries. Sitting on a not so safe safety isle, a woman who looked to be in her twenties, stood begging in tattered clothes next to her little daughter whose eyes were dim from hunger of who knows how long. She should have been in school, but instead she was sitting in the street helping her mother beg for pennies. And yet, they both smiled at me and almost made me ashamed to be heading to the grocery story to buy nutritious food for me to make dinner later on.
Theirs is the face of poverty in South Africa, and while many men are also engaged in a struggle for life, the legacy of the oppressive, decades-long white minority rule, by every measure, it is the women who are hit hardest in every conceivable way—from those with the highest AIDS infection and death rates to those with the least chance of escaping a life of poverty life through education.
The face of Nomsa is another one that will be indelibly imprinted in my head and heart. Her mother died when she was five or six and as the woman at the orphanage where she finally landed put it, her stepfather "took her for his wife." In the process, he infected her with the AIDS virus. Finally, an alert teacher noticed something was wrong and managed to get at the awful truth of her little life and she was immediately removed from the house, the stepfather arrested. He later died of AIDS complications.
Thanks to the kindness and generosity of people like you, Nomsa was able to live a relatively normal life for a while. Except when she had to tell her story on occasion, her smile returned and for a while, the head of the orphanage described her as even "cheeky" on occasion—a South African term for acceptably sassy. But only for a while. After an outbreak of chicken pox, only a minor inconvenience for most children, as I recall from my own case years ago, Nomsa's immune system, severely compromised by the AIDS virus, could not withstand even that normal childhood nuisance and she died at the age of 12.
Stephen Carter Remarks
Remarks from Celebrating Life! Honorary Patron, on the inaugural April 2007 Celebrating Life! concert: Stephen Lewis (Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS and Board Chair, Stephen Lewis Foundation
"Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to salute this sublime concert and its objectives. When one part of our world is under siege, the privileged part --- our part --- must respond. It's terribly important, in fighting the AIDS pandemic, to show support for the remarkably courageous struggle for survival that envelops the southern part of the African continent. Whether it's the Black Doll project, or income generating projects, or twinning of computer technology, it all forms a bond of human solidarity in the face of the virus. One day that solidarity will end the carnage and subdue this dreadful plague. In the meantime, the women and children of Africa know that they have friends in North America on whom they can count, and one of the best of those friends is the Project People Foundation."
- Stephen Lewis
www.stephenlewisfoundation.org
Cedar Foundation Remarks
Read at the November 18th Celebration of Life Concert
Now, after spending considerable time in South Africa, we at CEDAR Foundation better understand the extreme needs of the poor in that country. Education, disease and despair are enormous challenges that can only be overcome with the best of will, expertise and resources. While the South African people are experiencing much post-apartheid progress, they struggle to solve all of the many layers of past and current human tragedy and crises in their still-troubled nation. And they cannot do it alone.
So today, CEDAR Foundation extends its fond wishes to Project People Foundation as you all enjoy this beautiful event in Atlanta. We also extend to all in attendance recognition of the fact that the courage, innovation, talent and heart that built America into a strong and caring nation are what is now needed to assist South Africa in the days and years ahead.
As Project People Foundation endeavors to make South Africa its international priority, CEDAR foundation applauds them – And also trusts that the hearts of Atlanta have been touched by today’s extraordinary blending of music, voices, religion and communities. It is this spirit of interconnectedness that we believe is essential if the world is to survive with dignity.
Often, I have quoted Martin Luther King Jr. – and it is appropriate that I do so again today. He said “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. We leave you with that thought!
- Robert and Lynda Bentall, CEDAR Foundation
www.bentallcapital.com
