Desaturated this to con you into believing it was art!

On Saturday morning I went through to Umthombo, a safe house for street children, to donate some surfboards and shoot some pics of the kids receiving them for Mahala. You can read more about the surf program Mahala are running, here. It really is a great program and I encourage all of you with old boards or wetsuits to donate them.

Umthombo seeks to get kids off the streets, drugs, violence etc and reintegrate them into society, family or schools. Speaking to Tom, the CEO, he informed me that they reintegrate around 200 kids per year. He also told us of the shocking approach our municipality/police to “clean” up the city for the World Cup. Basically the cops round up children, drive an hour down the coast and just drop them off where the children without any other hope have to walk all the way back. Shocking!

One part of Umthombo’s program involves teaching the kids how to repair and surf surfboards and with the program quite advanced now one of the kids is even being looked at for sponsorship. The trip was a real soul booster and I need to say big ups to Tom for his amazing work. Here are some portraits of the kids: