Carlos Mesquita. File Picture: Brendan Magaar/Independent Newspapers
As we say goodbye to 2024 and prepare to say hello to 2025, just a reminder that our experience of a particular year is more about what we decide to take into and put into that year.
The attitude and energy you take into a new year tends to determine how you will eventually experience that particular year.
So, remember to take your first step into 2025 with an attitude that is conducive to you rising above all challenges that this journey called life might throw at you!
Its also apt to share what my organisation will be up to on New Year’s Eve!
As befits a true South African organisation, we will be visiting 3 areas adjacent to one another but which showcase the greatest disparities amongst its residents.
We will for the second year visit Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Hangberg.
We will be accompanied by 9 of the 10 individuals that we accommodated last year after the devastating fires in that area.
A year after taking them off the streets along with their combined 12 children, 9 of these individuals are permanently employed and moved into their own chosen accommodation.
They returned to us with a request: to pay forward the program that helped them achieve this.
They have already paid their old landlord at the accommodation venue we housed them at a year ago to accommodate another ten individuals in the same area under the same circumstances as they were living until we intervened.
And they have challenged the program that "saved our lives, "restart", to do the same.
And so this year, we are going to be out there on New Year's Eve, standing proudly alongside the beneficiaries of our New Year's intervention last year, now as equals, assisting another 20 homeless individuals in these 3 areas that merely need the hands up of assistance with rental assistance for one month!
And, as these nine individuals have pointed out to me, next year we might very well be doing the same exercise alongside the twenty we accommodate this New Year's Eve and together be accommodating another 40!
This first group has committed themselves to pay it forward until there is no one living helplessly on the streets of Camps Bay, Hout Bay and Hangberg!
So, as you enjoy the countdown to the New Year at any one of the plenty of the most popular venues to do so along this beautiful stretch of the South African coast, please take a minute to think of the amazing success story of 9 adults and 12 children that we took off the streets a year ago in this same area and think about their beautiful gesture to return a year later to pay their blessing forward.
Think of your own blessings and pay them forward.
May you all have a wonderfully prosperous 2025 and find a way to pay your blessings forward by assisting just one person who is in need of just that little bit to get them back on their feet.
Of the ten we helped, one of the guys left a pregnant girlfriend and returned to the streets within the first month. But she too, is employed, has had her baby, is gainfully employed and no longer a victim of abuse.
Thank you to you all that have been reading my column now for four years!
Who would have thought a homeless man could make a difference.
And he did! With tears in my eyes and an ABBA song in my heart, I dedicate this column to the man that started it all. My friend, Danny Oosthuizen!
(We are doing it skattie! Keep walking this walk with us.)
HEPPIE HEPPIE 2025
* Mesquita is a previously homeless man and founder of Outsider an organisation focused on enlightening people on homelessness and on accommodating those living on the streets in a dignified and sustainable manner. He can be reached at therehomingcollectivenpccarlos@gmail.com or 071 341 3378.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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