I sat in our garden on Saturday morning with a local taxi driver, a security guard and six local children, the children I took by the hand and showed them around the garden and then asked them to go off and play. Other than the births of my own children I have never experienced such moments of joy and exhiliaration. In six days we transformed an arid site into one of the most spectacular gardens I have ever had the joy to visit. Our fantastic team of 54 have built this garden not just with materials but with their hearts, and the families in Freedom Park have seen this effort and will appreicate their facilities for many years.
I can not express in words the effect that this week has had on my life, I have made many new friends and seen how my old friends have surpassed their loyalties to me during this great project. Ultimately I think we can all go back to our families, friends and sponsors with our heads raised high, knowing we have have brought them and us great pride in our efforts.
It would be a great pleasure to see many of you join us again next year. Plans are already in progress for the site and the theme of our next garden. In order to help with the fundraising for next year I was hoping to collect as many photographs and video footage as possible so that we could produce a short film of our project. I would appreciate it if you could put whatever you have on a CD or DVD and post it to me.
For anyone wishing to go next year the forms can be downloaded from the charities website, for those that can not, many thanks and I hope that you will always cherish the memory of your time in Freedom Park. For the rest of the stalwards, I'll see you all soon.
We will be organising a night out in a bout three weeks, so I'll keep you posted. Many thanks and kind regards, to you and you families. Dominic
Postal Address:
Dominic Loughran
Garden of Hope Project 2008
2 Earlsfort Glade
Lucan
Co. Dublin
Tel: 01-6249612
Mobile: 087-2854602
Garden Design
2 comments:
Hi Dominic,
it was a real pleasure working with you and the rest of the team. It was really something special to share the toil and pain, the rainy days, the sandstorms and the blistering sun on occasions. The support of the local South Africans was amazing. They knew more than anyone how important this was and when the garden, playground and community center were handed over it was plane to see in the tears of the community leaders and many grown men how important this was for them. Thank you and the rest of the team for sharing in such a rare moment of beauty and humanity. It is something I will never forget.
Regards John
Hello Dominic,
Thank you for alowing me to leave some memories of Whitey in the Garden of Hope.It meant a lot to be part of your fantastic creation on Freedom Park. I went back with the family (my step grandchildren loved the play areas) on November 13th,to show them what had been achieved in such a short but special time,and although the site looked like a ghost town with the sand blowing,some of the houses unfinished and no-one around,it was easy to feel what the 1380 volunteers had done.
Please, no high walls in the next design!
See you next year.
Regards
Judy White
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