Toys for Africa

This year Toys for Africa is proud to announce that we will be having our Mandela Day celebrations at Alma School in Pretoria. With just under 250 children, Alma School was chosen due to the commitment we saw when we approached them. The school looks after children with various forms of disabilities, mentally and physical. They are doing their utmost to offer the children the best schooling experience and when they called us about our catalogue, the pure excitement and joy in their voices made the decision a very easy one. We will do our level best to offer them the show of a lifetime, toys for all the children and a few extras like motorbikes, etc. It is an honour to be part of Mandela Day 2012 and we are looking forward to spend the day at Alma School. The news broke first, right here on forgood.
New name, same mission
As a company we are always looking at ways to improve our "product" and our ideas. We have been too many hours trying to register the name Toys for Africa, always running in to doors of people supposedly there to assist and in admiration of our work. Spending money at the CIPC just to be told to pay some more. The name Toys for Africa has been registered since the late 1960s and never went in to business. Even today the company has been de-registered, just to be kept alive, hoping we would cough up $$$ for the sake of a name. Even the website name was registered with a message saying "Send us an email and we'll tell you what this domain will cost you." The replying message said R 6 750.00 for a name registered with the simple cause of making money (illegally). So after countless hours wasted we made the decision to change our legal name. We will still be doing business under Toys for Africa, but as from April 2012 we have the legal name of Toys at Heart (Pty) Ltd. The only major change is the bank account that will bear this name and all agreements will also make use of this name. Other than that we are same group of people, now with a 2nd name and new logos etc. to follow. Toys for Africa will be used strictly for all toy handouts and other projects and we will now see how to register that name as our NPO. Our Toys at Heart motto: " We are not charity, we are all HEART - Toys for Africa" It is exciting times we are entering and we will soon be launching a few new things under our new brand.      
More toy handouts
We at Toys for Africa pride ourselves on being active. So when we got the opportunity to skip the office and hand out toys for 3 days, we jumped at the opportunity. On Tuesday 19 June Menlyn Park Shopping Centre joined us for the second time as we handed out toys to the children all around Pretoria at the Carel du Toit Trust, Tshwane Haven, Amadea Safe House and Bramley Home. The children we met were all awesome and our knowledge on some of the difficulties children faced also improved. Some children had hearing difficulties, one little girl had no arms or legs, some children have been abused or had more serious forms of neglect. On Wednesday 20 June Quick Trim SA joined us for our second visit to the Pure Hope Kids at NG Moreleta. Earlier in the year we took them some second-hand toys donated to us, with the promise that we would be back with new toys. Quick Trim SA stepped in and allowed us to not only give each child a new toy but also some extras and enough crayons and pencils to last the year. On Monday 25 June we visited the Rural Institute for Education and Training in Randfontein with the Wits students, thanks to TeleReference Systems. Again our eyes opened in a new way to what some children must go through at the hands of their own parents. We are driving towards doing at least 10 000 toys a month until December. We can never say thank you enough to all our sponsors.
New Ambassador 
A new Ambassador joins Toys for Africa. Francois van Rensburg, recently joined artists like Heinz Winckler, L'loyd Cele, Marcel Caroto, Esti, Sports star Matthew Booth and model Lourens van der Merwe as an ambassador. He is known for his voice on RSG show "Die Ratels", a cameo on Binnelanders and his debut album Dromerlaan received a number of compliments across the entertainment world.