New resource centre for Children A’Loud

• Published date: 25 April 2024
• Author: Yolande Du Preez yolande.dupreez@acm.co.za
• Publication title: False Bay Echo

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...