Marimba Sponsorship in Cape Town

“Below is a wonderful letter written to Pat Murphy and Arm In Arm In Africa from a group called Blackroots Marimbas.This is a group of young adults who approached us while in SA two years ago, through JL Zwane Center. They had requested a small donation to assist in getting their group started. AIAIA provided funding to assist in purchasing marimbas and a little seed money. The rest is history…. Greetings Arm in Arm in Africa .We hope that you are all doing well. We are a group from the JL Zwane Church in Cape Town Guguletu. You assisted us greatly when you donated us with marimbas to start a marimba group in Guguletu and we are writing this e-mail to thank you for what you have done for us and to share with you what we have done with your kind donation thus far. Prepare yourself for a very long e-mail lol. Firstly we cannot thank you enough for your generous sponsorship, it's an amazing gift that you have given us. It has been a very busy year and a half for us since we got the marimbas and we apologize for the silence on our part. Last year in March we formed the group called BlackRoots Marimbas and at the moment it consists of 3 ladies namely Sibahle Sky Dladla (leader)-African music student at UCT, Sharon Mhambi - Humanities student at UCT and Ntombekhaya Halam -fulltime Volunteer at J.L Zwane from Gugulethu and a male percussionist Eric hunt from Uct. We started practicing as soon as we got the marimbas and simultaneously started teaching the youth around Guguletu. We had our first official gig at the Table of Peace and Unity at Table Mountain in May 2012 and have since gone on to play all around Cape Town from Hohenort Cellars Hotel in Constantia, the Budget Speech lunch at Parliament, Protea Hotel in Bantry Bay, Stellenbosch, the Aquila Game Reserve in Touwrsrivier to various matrimonial occasions. Should you visit Cape Town again soon you will find us playing regularly at the City Bowl Market in Cape Town. We owe all of this to you and so much more. We have now been invited to play in Johannesburg at the Moshito Music Conference this weekend and it would not have been possible without you. With your generosity we have started a band that in future will go on to greater heights. As we were still in the process of establishing ourselves as a group we have only just started thinking of our future plans but one thing is certain and that is we want to teach marimba to youth from disadvantaged areas. We attempted to teach marimbas to youth at our church over the past year however this came with great difficulty as we had no secure structure. We have now decided to use the school structure in order to obtain our goal. Over the next year we plan on getting marimba teaching certificates so that we can teach legally at schools. Thereafter we plan on approaching schools to propose that they include marimbas as a part of their extra-curricular activities. It is at this time where we will also register the band as either an NGO or a company and approach the government and other possible sponsors. This quest may take some time but we do believe that in the long-run it would be a long-term and most importanBtly a sustainable initiative for the youth development. We have so many ideas on going forward and we are so grateful that you gave us the start we needed. You can check out our page on facebook for pictures or let us know if you want us to send you some. The facebook link iswww.facebook.com/BlackRootsMarimbas and you can also follow us on Twitter on @BlackRootsSA for updates on what we are doing. You can also check out our website http://blackrootsmarimbas.wix.com/blackroots. Thanks Again and keep well BlackRoots Marimbas