TCD Trust

The Tourism Community Development Trust (TCD Trust) is a tourism-focused development agency based in Cape Town, South Africa. The TCD Trust’s objective is to make a difference at a grass-roots level in South Africa’s communities by consolidating the fundraising and social investment efforts of companies within the South African Tourism industry.

Tourist Community Development Trust is playing a leading role in community involvement in South Africa, working on sustainable projects. For every one of our passengers travelling to South Africa, on the go is proud to make a donation to the trust, which will be used across the following range of projects:

• Blomvlei Multi-Purpose Centre; building a multi-purpose facility on the premises of the Blomvlei Primary School grounds in Hanover Park, Western Cape Province, South Africa. A magnificient library has just been built and is already receiving quite iconic status in the area.

• The Respite Centre; for those suffering from HIV and other infectious diseases

• Africa My Bra; working with local unemployed women in Cape Town townships, using their beadwork skills to produce clothing accessories and in the process giving them a salary

• Baphumelele Educare Centre; a pre-school and creche in the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town.

• Baphumelele Education Centre; a home for abandoned, sick and abused children and the Clothing Collection, an initiative that has clothing bins at hostels and guesthouses for old and unwanted clothes, which are then re-distributed to poorer communities

• Masikhule Home Creche; this was the founding project in 1993, to build a more adequate and desperately needed new creche for the children in Cape Town

• Rosie’s soup kitchen; Rosie started service soup to the children of her community in 2002. The trust decided to support Rosie by equipping her with a brand new kitchen.

The TCD Trust is a registered non-profit organisation - visit www.tcdtrust.org.za to find out more.

Below is an update from the TCD Trust on their achievements and challenges in 2010:

2010 has been an enormously challenging but good year for the TCD Trust. We began construction of the Blomvlei Library at Blomvlei Primary School in Hanover park in January 2010. Besides enormous increases in the building costs from the original quotes the construction was successfully completed in August 2010.

The library is magnificent and is already receiving quite iconic status in the area. The learners already have such an enormous sense of pride of this beautiful new library on their school grounds even though it is not furnished yet.

Due to the huge building costs we did not have sufficient funds to complete the landscaping, shelving, furniture, computers and equipment for the library. Since August we have been seriously fund raising for these things. In October we received an amazing donation from TICE for

R100 000.00 and we also held our own fund raiser dinner which was kindly sponsored by the Mount Nelson Hotel, we managed to raise a further R125 000.00 form our dinner.

SATSA members came out to the school at the end of October to celebrate World Responsible Tourism Day - 20 trees were donated and planted by the SATSA members to begin the greening of Blomvlei Library.

In January we will use the funds we have raised to install the shelving and furniture and we hope to officially open the Library in February 2011 which also coincides with the 30 year anniversary of the school.

We have also undertaken to find a librarian for the library and pay her salary during the developmental stage of the library in order to get the facility fully

operational and functional. Some of the developmental programmes which will be introduced into the library will include literacy development, computer skills, life skills, career guidance, art and dance workshops.

The Library was our primary focus this year as it is the biggest and most ambitious project the TCD Trust has taken on to date. The project has taken two years of fund raising and will need continued support through their developmental phase and the establishment of the various developmental programs which will be introduced at the

school through the library.

We still at the same time support all our other projects such as this year we repainted and did a minor renovation to the children's bathrooms at Baphumelele Educare in Khayalitcha. We will also be providing their annual Christmas Braai again this year for all the children and staff.

We are also still paying the salaries for the two full time nurses who are at the HIV Respite Center in Khayalitcha which the TCD Trust completed in 2007.

We really try to get all projects to a point that once we have intervened and assisted them that they can be self sustainable in order that we can also help other worthwhile projects in need.

We always keep in contact with all projects and assist them from time to time, when and where we can, and if we have the funds available.