The South African Broadcasting Corporation -SABC- News initiative – Touching Lives!

The South African Broadcasting Corporation -SABC- News initiative – Touching Lives – in conjunction with the world renowned humanitarian organization – Gift of the Givers – partnered to encourage compassionate South Africans towards aiding Somalia. 

To this end, SABC embarked on a Telethon – a three-hour telephone fundraising broadcast – in an effort to raise money to assist the situation in Somalia.

South African celebrities and government officials together with the SABC staff took to the call, pledged their time and manned-up the telethon. The telethon proved to be a real telephone marathon as telephones rang out of control from compassionate people who were eager to pledge their contributions in helping their fellow Africans.

The callers ranged from ordinary children to elderly South Africans and businesses who pledged contributions from tens, hundreds even thousands worth of South African (SA) Rands towards a humanitarian course.

“Having covered Somali as a news story, we then realized that it was not enough to just inform South Africans about the Somalian disheartening situation, we had to find a way to help. SA is an African country, we regard Somalia as our neighbor, and as such we are also affected”, said Mike Siluma, SABC Acting Head of News.

“As one of our many ways to reach out to the less fortunate, Telethon is an initiative that creates awareness of an African plight to an African child. As could be seen from the Somali footages, women are most affected by the plight. There can be no greater gift from the women of SA to the women of Africa”, shared Reverend Eve Abrahams, Gift of the Givers.

One of the celebrities present, Theo Kgosinkwe, SA’s prominent Afro-pop musician, song-writer and producer, relayed that it gave him great pleasure to be part of such a great initiative. “As Africans we are brought up with the values of ‘ubuntu’ (humanism), and sayings like - ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ (a person is a person through (other) persons). As South Africans, Somalians are our brothers and sisters”.

Abdinasir Bashir Ahmed, a Somalian citizen who is a member of Somali Association of South Africa (SASA), shared his gratitude of the Telethon initiative. “We are very grateful, it’s unthinkable, we never thought we are special”, said Abdinasir with emotion in his voice. “We never thought people cared - now we know that we have brothers and sister out there”.

Ms Joyce Dube, SABC Corporate Social Investment (CSI) Manager, deemed the initiative a success. “It is the collective effort of the SABC team that made this initiative a success -even more - it is the callers who yielded to this humanitarian call and without holding back, pledged their overwhelming donations”.

(Source : Channel Africa)