Advancing Towards Our Goals

A Genesis Hope Operations Report for February and March 2024 - By Jono Downham

With our focus for the past 2 months being on the development of the Genesis Ekhaya project, I feel like I needed to read our teams reports to refresh my memory on just what has gone on in the various projects these past weeks. Ekhaya has been a great success! The team has proven to be a formidable force when we are chasing deadlines.

We did our best to repurpose old assets and use what we already had. However this can also be a challenge when it came to renovating an old building. There were a couple unforeseen costs that needed our attention, yet all in all, I believe we achieved our goals.

The Seapark house was next on the agenda. I am aware that some were not too enthusiastic to see us take this refurb on now, but I want to reassure you that it was a worth while move and one that will prove to be beneficial in time to come. A key element that made the seapark house an achievable goal was that we had good momentum with our building and maintenance team. We had all tools needed and left over product from the Ekhaya job that we could re purpose.

I had a building contractor come to see the house before we started and then again when we had completed the job, his comment was “ this must have cost you at least half a million”. Our goal for Seapark house was to complete the security/perimeter and the middle section of the house. We were able to achieve this and more. The south wing has been patched and painted. All that is left is to do some electrical work and then position furniture. With the need to purchase some furniture for this wing. The North wing is still as is and we will discuss with the team in time on a way forward.

Genesis Vehicles – We have on a process of fixing and upgrading our Genesis vehicles and are pleased that our whole Genesis Fleet is now in tiptop shape. This has been a goal for me for quit sometime and I believe that we have managed to grow and upgrade our Vehicles without negatively affecting our operational funding. Well done to our team for their efforts in fundraising for these much needed tools.

Staff development- it is encouraging to make a comparison on the challenges we were facing 2 years ago, to the challenges we are facing now. As we are all aware, the challenges never go away, they just evolve. Our Genesis team are invested, are growing in all walks of life and the leadership in our Genesis team is reaching new heights. We can see Gods hand in the organization.