The Ann Harding Cheshire Home is a residential care facility for adults between the ages of 18 and 54 who have a physical disability. It provides care and support services that empower persons with disabilities, providing work that facilitates independent living for residents – without regard for gender, race caste or creed.
The Ann Harding Cheshire Home constantly seeks ways in which their residents can work and earn an income to generate funding in a sustainable manner. Many of the services that they offer require reliable electricity.
“Unfortunately, when the lights go out, particularly due to loadshedding, our residents are extremely unproductive,” says Jackie Kyle, Fundraising Manager of Ann Harding Cheshire Home. “Everything grinds to a halt, and we are unable to do any work. The more serious issue is that the emergency lights, and the residents’ bell systems do not work. With loadshedding anticipated to be a part of South African life for many years, we needed to address this issue with some urgency.”
Ann Harding approached HOT CARES, the charity initiative aligned to HOT 102.7FM for assistance. “We have always had a wonderful relationship with Ann Harding,” says Carmen Rocha, HOT CARES Manager. “They really do important work in creating independence, motivation and purpose for their residents. There’s no way that we would leave them in the dark when a solution was easy to find.”
The Ann Harding Home already had solar panels which were originally purchased to run their borehole pump. Unfortunately, these were found to be inadequate for the borehole, but would be adequate to power the admin offices – computers and wi-fi – as well as the residents’ bell system and emergency lights in the passages, during an outage. All that was required was an amount of R 46 766.36 to pay for the installation and setup.
“As HOT CARES always seeks to make a meaningful difference, it was an absolute pleasure to be able to pay for this installation,” says Lloyd Madurai, Managing Director of HOT 102.7FM. “We have been blessed with tremendous support from Joburg’s hottest listeners, who regularly open their hearts to support HOT CARES and to be able to put their generosity to such a good use was an absolute pleasure. We wish the residents continued success and look forward to continuing our association with the Ann Harding Cheshire Home for many years to come”.
