Art in the Forest

Founded in 2004, the Light From Africa Foundation is a non-profit, public benefit organisation. Our goal is to improve the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children through financial and psychosocial support.   We offer all our partner charities the opportunity to make use of fully funded psychosocial support programmes using clay as a therapeutic tool to relieve, process and facilitate workshops such as self awareness, ubuntu, leadership and trauma counselling.

We sustain our outreach programmes through selling our ceramic studio line, auctioning fine art quality ceramics as well as representing and selling the art of South Africa’s best ceramic artists.  For further fund raising, we get creative with clay and offer team building events, clay therapy workshops, sculpture sessions and more! 

Founded in 2004, the Light From Africa Foundation is a non-profit, public benefit organisation. Our goal is to improve the lives of orphaned and vulnerable children through financial and psychosocial support.   We offer all our partner charities the opportunity to make use of fully funded psychosocial support programmes using clay as a therapeutic tool to relieve, process and facilitate workshops such as self awareness, ubuntu, leadership and trauma counselling.

We sustain our outreach programmes through selling our ceramic studio line, auctioning fine art quality ceramics as well as representing and selling the art of South Africa’s best ceramic artists.  For further fund raising, we get creative with clay and offer team building events, clay therapy workshops, sculpture sessions and more! 

In addition to the financial support that we offer, we have several therapeutic outreach programmes to ensure that all the children and carers of our partner charities are getting the psychosocial support they need throughout the year.

Everyone who has worked with clay can testify to its healing powers; combine that with input from life coaches, art therapists, expressive art facilitators, art teachers, psychologists and leadership facilitators, and we are able to REACH hundreds of care workers and vulnerable children with therapeutic creative healing every month. 

Having experienced both trauma and loss on a regular basis, we find that providing a safe and creative space allows the children and carers we support to feel alive, empowered, nurtured, playful, positive, confident, accepted, acknowledged, loved and cared for!  Reaching out with these programs also enables us to establish strong relationships with our partner charities who send their vulnerable children and carers to workshops and classes throughout the year.  

Transcending all cultural and language barriers that can be faced amongst a rainbow nation such as South Africa’s, our outreach programs offer children and carers a unique artistic voice and the tools they need to heal.

Our partner charities in the Western Cape for 2012 are: James House, Home from Home, Fikelela Childrens Home, Education Beyond Borders, Bright Start, Rainbow Dreams Trust, Tenterden Place of Safety and Coma Care.  Each of these charities have various projects and we are working with their care workers, social workers, foster mums, teachers and admin staff as well as all the vulnerable children they support (from age 3 and up).

We opened an office in Johannesburg in May 2012 and are currently looking at partnering with: Rose of Hope Orphanage, The Baby House, Claw’s Youth Development Programme, Ikemeleng Youth Centre and Hotel Hope Orphanage as well as many more grass roots projects and Youth Development Programmes.

We offer our partner charities the following throughout the year:

CLAY CARE: Four full day workshops for all their carers.  Therapeutic clay processes are used in each workshop in conjunction with yoga or stretch, meditation, music, a fabulous lunch, massage, laughter therapy and feedback.  Themes include a pamper day as well as self awareness, leadership, teambuilding and trauma therapy.

During the school holidays, we offer all the children from our partner charities fun and creative CLAY PLAY workshops using clay as a way to express themselves and communicate current issues.

We also offer weekly CLAY CLASS sessions to groups of talented young children (as selected from our partner charities).  These children are all battling at school yet have artistic talent and have made a commitment to their class.  We are monitoring their progress at school whilst watching their self awareness and self belief develop in leaps and bounds.

All our programs are incredibly therapeutic in themselves but should one of our care workers or children require extra attention after a workshop with us, we provide a one on one CLAY COUNSELLOR.

What type of organisation are you?

NPO

Are you registered as a Public Benefit Organisation?

Yes

Are you able to issue a Section 18A certificate to donors so that their donations are tax-deductable? 

Yes

What % of my donation does the organisation receive?

100% as profit from our social enterprise together with our annual chairman’s grant covers all our operational costs.

 How will my donation be used? 

100% of all donations are either given in cash to our partner charities to assist with basic necessities for the children they care for OR used to facilitate therapeutic workshops for these vulnerable kids and their care workers to ensure that not only are their physical needs met, but their emotional and mental ones too.

Support & Donation

Make a Cash Donation

Why Support Us

With more and more orphaned and vulnerable children needing homes and many charities facing budget cuts, we aim to not only assist financially but to offer much needed psychosocial support. We believe that with early intervention, we can use our therapeutic clay workshops to empower vulnerable young people whilst equipping their care workers/foster mums with new skills and a positive “I can” outlook.  We are already reaching out to hundreds of care workers and vulnerable kids, using clay to help them sculpt a brighter future for themselves.

In addition to this, many ceramic artists and potters are able to benefit financially through our social enterprise at ART in the FOREST.  Most potters find themselves struggling to make a living in South Africa hence Light From Africa Foundation is dedicated to preserving this art as well as educating the public and advancing the careers and profits of as many artists and potters as we can whilst raising funds for our therapeutic clay workshops.  Through skills development at our studios as well as professional sales and marketing of the best of South African ceramicists we are able to generate our operating costs whilst supporting and developing wonderful talent.

Light From Africa

Head Office CT

021 794 0291

info@lightfromafrica.com

MD Catherine Bolton

071 795 7521

Catherine@lightfromafrica.com