The Lighthouse is a care center for cerebral palsied children in Linmeyer, Johannesburg, South Africa.
When I started my journey in the charity field about 21 years ago, I decided to work at some charities first in order to get a feel for the business. At first I worked at a charity that was supposedly doing correspondence on behalf of prisoners, but sadly this didn't work out too well, as the donor money was being used by the owners for personal purposes. I teamed up with one of the charity managers as a witness and we closed the charity down.
Then I moved on to work at another charity and it was here that I met a wonderful lady Luisa Nazareth. At this particular charity there were also a lot of behind the scenes goings on and after a couple of months both Luiza and I left.
She established the Lighthouse Care Center for Cerebral Palsied children about three years after I established The Papillon Foundation charity in 2002.
Luiza started off at her home with two children and I can only ascribe the fact of her success in growing the Lighthouse, to the lessons that we learnt at the charities where we were previously employed. Donors money is sacred and must be used for its intended purposes. This reasoning is what kept both Papillon and the Lighthouse going for so many years.
About three years ago Luiza died but she had trained staff at the Lighthouse and she had also trained an experienced manager to take over the Lighthouse. Papillon had supported them for many years with whatever we could scrape together and the photos above was taken at a recent party that Papillon hosted for the children at the Lighthouse. It is not a very big charity, as they have 37 children, but it affords them the time to concentrate on a more personal level in the development of the children.