Over the weekend of 15-17 November the Cape Region Skin Renewal staff went to give the Thuthuzela Centre, of the Rape Crisis organisation, a facelift.
All staff and contractors joined us for the different weekend shifts on Friday, Saturday & Sunday, and the hard work that was done by either: painting, cleaning, organising, or unpacking assisted in the very visible transformation of this Crisis Centre!
Before we started the Centre was painted very vibrantly with shocking colours of purple, pink and orange, and in some serious need to TLC. These harsh colours we thought to be very unnerving for the survivors and that a calmer environment might assist in recovery from a traumatic rape experience. There were also various items required to assist in the daily operations of the Centre, with which we aimed to help.
All Skin Renewal therapists did charity fundraising massages in our clinics, with which we managed to raise enough funds to repaint the entire Centre in a calm light green, and install wall mounted fans in all 6 rooms, as well as extractor fans in the two showers. Through financial donations from NuAngle (suppliers of SkinMedica) and Lamelle Laboratories, we were able to pay for the make of cupboards & toy boxes for the Children’s Play room, and a massive wardrobe to store all the donated clothing we collected for the survivors. We also purchased 100 top quality towels so the survivors can take a warm soothing shower at the centre and feel a bit of love and comfort. Generous toiletry donations were also received from Logica Beauty Supplies and Genop. Further donations was collected through a dance marathon, run by one of our support members, through which she involved the local community and managed to gather boxes full of toiletries, and much needed items to make up care packages for the survivors. To finish off the new look, new permanent signs were made and installed by Signforce to replace the printed laminations.
As a final contribution Skin & Body Renewal is able to send 5 different volunteers on a 3month counselling course. This will empower these individuals to also work at the Centre and be able to assist, counsel and guide the survivors and alleviate the thinly spread staff compliment currently available to help at the Centres.
The weekend was a great success and the crisis centre staff love their new working environment. We trust our small contribution will support this ongoing Crisis Centre in the wonderful work that they do. Thank you to each and every one’s contribution of time, money, hard work and love! For more information on the Centre and on how you can get involved, please visit the Rape Crisis website.