Staff members of the Iliso Care Society in Site C were thrilled after a locally-based Dr Shiraz Patel announced he was going to contribute R65 000 to their centre on Tuesday 9 December.
Iliso is the non-profit organisation that conducts various community-upliftment initiatives.
The announcement was made at Patel’s surgery at the Thembani Shopping Centre in Thembani. He hiked on Table Mountain for 65 days to raise funds for Iliso, which he described as giving back to the community, one he has served for 35 years.
“I have worked with Iliso for many years. The objective was to raise R1 000 for each day for the children. I started hiking at 06:00 at Platteklip Gorge, Table Mountain and it usually takes 70 minutes to finish it. But heavy winds were a major factor because sometimes I’d refrain because of it. On Sundays I used to climb twice just to cover the other days I missed due to weather.”
Patel said he had started hiking on Wednesday 1 October and finished on Sunday 7 December, and while doing so many people donated. Their money was assembled in a fundraising hub called GivenGain before being disbursed to Iliso.
GivenGain is a global online fundraising platform run by a non-profit foundation. Its mission is to help individuals and organisations raise more for the causes they care about. Managing director for the Isilo Care Society, Vivian Zilo, expressed her gratitude to Patel for doing a great initiative. She said it was heartwarming to see there are people who have a good heart. Zilo said the funds would be used to buy things the centre needs for the work it does.
“I’m over the moon… With the money given we will buy seeding, material for a sewing project and some things for our early-childhood programme.”
Resident Pamela Ntaba said it was great to see there are people who care about community development. “It is very interesting to see Dr Patel ploughing back to the community after so many years. The fact that the money is going to help the children means a lot to me.”
