A special Easter delight for vulnerable kids in Mbizana

Easter is traditionally a time of blessing but there was a special Easter treat in store for the children of the Umz’uvukile Special School Centre, which looks after children with special needs in Mbizana in the Eastern Cape

The Wild Coast Sun was part of a group of local businesses and community leaders, including Mayor of the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Local Municipality Daniswa Mafumbatha, who took part in the special Easter outreach project on Easter Monday.

Wild Coast Sun General Manager Peter Tshidi said the resort had hosted lots of families over Easter time and watching children enjoy the festivities it struck him that there may be some children in the surrounding communities for whom the joy of Easter was not something they were likely to have experienced.

“I spoke to my team about this and we put plans in place and we also reached out to our local business partner Mr Ronaldo Mayor who co-owns Debonairs Pizza and who was only too happy to see how we could make a difference in the lives of some of these kids.”

Together with the Office of Mayor, they identified the Umz’uvukile centre and the Ikhaya Lembizana home and day care centre for the disabled. Mayor Mafumbatha said it was important for Government and local business to come together to explore different ways to show support and care to vulnerable persons.

“Our team at the Wild Coast Sun got together to make a giant Easter egg cake for the kids at Umz’uvukile. The size of the Easter egg was 760cm x 480cm – about the size of a giant dinosaur egg!,” Tshidi said.

To show the magnitude of the egg, the main ingredients included 120 eggs, 4kgs butter and 4kgs cake flour for the cake and 4kgs icing sugar, 3kgs butter and 7kgs plastic icing. 

“All in all, it took our team of inspired chefs and culinary artists 24 hours to make this giant-sized Easter egg cake and to see the delight on the faces of the kids made it all worthwhile,” Tshidi said. “Suddenly, they too got to experience the childhood joy and thrill of Easter.”

But that was not all. The children at Umz’uvukile were also treated with different flavours of pizzas from Red Ruby Solutions.

“It is such a blessing and brings so much joy to see the delight on the faces of these kids and we were absolute thrilled to be a part of this initiative,” Mayer said.

The Easter egg project team also delivered Easter goodies including Easter eggs and more pizza to the Ikhaya Lembizana centre where there was equal delight among residents and staff.

Mayor Mafumbatha said that the outreach to the two centres caring for the needs of vulnerable persons had made this Easter extra special.

“Nothing can describe the joy from seeing the delight on the faces of these special children and others with special needs and a very big thank you to all who supported and got involved,” she added.

The Wild Coast Sun, together with Debonairs and the local municipality took note of the challenges at the Umz’uvukile centre which is largely operated by volunteers and supported by donations, and will be exploring what further assistance can be rendered.

According to Mayer, Debonairs will be starting a campaign in May to donate pizza bread to local orphanages and Umz’uvukile Special Centre is one of the places that has been prioritised.