A community-minded group of people from Okehampton have secured funding to help rebuild a flood and tornado-damaged creche in South Africa.

The creche is essential to avoid parents leaving babies by the side of the road, sometimes in dumper trucks, while they go to work or college.

Okehampton Rotary has secured funding through its South West District hierarchy to contribute £2,000, joining forces with the Rotary Club of Umhlanga and its Rotaract Club of Tongaat to support the creche called Qalokusha Day Care in an impoverished area of Tongaat.

The centre is near Umhlanga in Kwa Zulu Natal on the east coast of South Africa.

It was started by a community member Isabel who began the day care with £20 she raised from selling goods and food and has continued to raise funding to keep the day care running.

Chris Bourne, Okehampton Rotary president, said: “Most of the parents of the community attend work and school, but they did not have anywhere for the babies to be looked after. Isabel noticed that this increased the discovery of more babies along the roads nearby and even in dumpsters.”

In the floods of 2022, the creche was very badly damaged and they are now operating from a single room which means age groups cannot be segregated. This has been further damaged in a tornado in June 2024 that further damaged the structure.

This project has been in the planning for nearly a year. The property is owned by a local council and consents and leases were lengthy and protracted. To speed up the provision of an urgently needed interim creche, wooden cabins have been provided with the help of the Okehampton Rotary’s £2,000 donation.

The new creche will now be fitted out with a new stove, fridge, heater and utensils – meals provided at school could well be the only the children get all day in what is such a poor area.