A non-profit organisation that helps disadvantaged children in Ocean View has a new resource centre to call home.

The new building in Draco Way was handed over to Children A’Loud on Thursday April 18. It was built by the Pinelands Development Company (PDC), a non-profit company and construction arm of the Garden Cities housing development company.

Children A’loud director and co-founder Renee Smith and PDC contracts manager Shaheem Kader cut the ribbon.

Mr Kader said construction started in September last year and was completed last month. Ms Smith said the new centre was a “dream come true”.

The non-profit, which now helps more than 300 children, was registered in 2012 with 23 children, but its roots go back to the 1980s, when Ms Smith and her husband, Merlin, arranged school-holiday camps for children from families still traumatised by apartheid’s forced removals.

The children, Ms Smith said, did not notice the desolation and isolation of the place they had been moved to, and many of the parents did not have the luxury of exposing their children to the world beyond Ocean View.

What had started as a few children of family and friends had become “busloads”, she said, adding that she and Merlin and their two adult children, Kiefer Smith and Tamlin Klein, had gone on to found Children A’Loud.

The centre, which has been run from the couple’s Zeekoeivlei home and Ocean View’s multi-purpose centre, offers academic support, career guidance, sports coaching, arts and culture, counselling, music therapy, assessments with occupational therapists, self-esteem workshops, anger management and holiday programmes.

It runs three camps a year for about 40 children, teaching life skills and environmental awareness.

Thanking the PDC for the centre, Ms Smith said: “All we can do is pray that God will bless you and your loved ones.”

She said the new centre would officially open next month, offering, among other things, jewellery making for the disabled, socialising sessions for children with autism and Down syndrome, and a reading corner for toddlers, in addition to the current services.

In August, the centre will run a parenting workshop.

Visit childrenaloud.co.za for more information.

Representatives from the Pinelands Development Company and Garden Cities handed over the new building to Children A’Loud founders Merlin and Renee Smith on Thursday April 18.

Pinelands Development Company contracts manager Shaheem Kader and Children A’loud director and co-founder Renee Smith cut the ribbon to the centre.

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