International Mandela Day July 18 and Action Guide

1. Background
18 July is birthday of the late former President Nelson R. Mandela, founder of Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and its sister organisations. Different organisations, individuals and groups tended to mark the day in one form or another within their means.
Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund marks the day in the form of the Annual Children’s Celebration with a theme and children congregate at its premises to read him well-wishing messages, performing songs and dance and reciting poems. Hosted on most suitable day decided jointly with day care centres and schools of participants, the children’s celebration remains a standing event on the Fund’s annual calendar year even after Mr. Mandela’s retirement from public life and set to continue with his passing as an honour by the Fund.
The United Nation Declaration of July 18 as International Mandela Day on November 2009, on the year of Mr. Mandela 91st birthday, helped to release global energy and movement for good and to generally help those in less fortunate circumstances. This is in honour of Mr. Mandela’s 67 years of service to the human struggle for freedom.
To join the world community, the Fund has since marked the day by giving added attention to various causes that fall within its programme work and carried out by implementing partners.
Added attention to these causes comes in the form of placing them on the world wide web for interested parties to be familiar with what each project does and the associated needs to carrying out their good work.
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2. What Mandela Day Means
Mandela Day is based on the idea that if every individual dedicates a short amount of time to making the world a better place, there is immense potential for collective good to flourish. Mandela Day is a call to action for every individual, group, corporate, to take responsibility for making the world a better place, one step at a time, in response to areas of need within their communities and guided by means at their disposal.
​Madiba the Public Servant Video available below:

3. Mandela Day: is as much an energiser to the Children’s Fund
The joy of being allowed to be children, to play, sing, dance, dream and be lost in the wonder of the innocence of childhood that should be delivered from homelessness, poverty, hunger, harm, danger, vulnerability, neglect and diseases. Any assistance given and received by the Fund or its partners counts to make everyone who shares the vision of the Fund a fellow traveller and commits to the belief that Every Child Counts.
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4. Programme work support
To volunteer support for Mandela Day  and for ease of reference to Programme work support, listed on the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund website are various causes and their needs for which believers in the vision of the Fund are invited to choose from to lend a helping hand by clicking link to programme work support http://www.nelsonmandelachildrensfund.com/who-we-are/partnership/#tour-1246. The listed causes are associated with implementing partners with established presence across SA’s nine provinces.
To  establish contact with any of the preferred partners to help please call Communications Officer Kagiso Bonoko on Tel (011) 274-5600 or send email to KagisoB@nmcf.co.za for vetting purposes confirming that the said partner is genuine as well as to be directed to the Fund’s relevant  Programme Specialists in the province for further details and engagement. The Fund website is:  www.nelsonmandelachildrensfund.com
Unique proposals, falling outside listed causes, that interested may wish to test feasibility with the involvement of the Fund are all advised to submit concept to Senior Programmes Manager Ncazelo Mlilo to  email address ncazelom@nmcf.co.za to be reviewed for viability.

5. Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Project
For children’s specialist health care needs, Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund has placed before South Africa a business case for the establishment of a teaching paediatric specialist Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital for which groundbreaking was done on March 20, 2014.
The key need for the establishment of the Children’s Hospital relate to capital costs details of which are obtainable on the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust website being www.nelsonmandelachildrenshospital.org.