Hollywoodbets and Lighthouse Foundation’s Brighter Future Project Provides for Rainbow of Hope Children’s Most Urgent Needs

Rainbow of Hope offers 24-hour care to children who have been neglected, abused or abandoned. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, and the subsequent national lockdown, the home has had to close their Treasure Trove shop which is one of their major sources of income. Funds raised in the shop are used to help cover their daily needs, so the shop closure has resulted in quite a bit of anxiety around covering these expenses. Hollywoodbets decided to make a donation of R12 500 to Rainbow of Hope due to the organisation being situated in the same community as their Vasco branch as well as a beneficiary of their My Community Programme. The money will be put towards the home’s expenses as well as for purchasing an online home-schooling programme.
This donation comes after South Africa’s leading bookmaker’s recent announcement that they will be partnering with Nomzamo Mbatha’s Lighthouse foundation with a ‘’Brighter Future’’ project. This partnership will see over R1 million being made available to 60 NPOs and NGOs across all nine of the country’s provinces through their Hollywoodbets My Community Programme. Both parties felt that they wanted to support those who need it most during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Since 2007, Rainbow of Hope has been providing full-time care for abused and abandoned children between 10 and 20 years old. They currently provide schooling, housing and meals to 13 beneficiaries. The children have been struggling to keep up with the mainstream curriculum so Rainbow of Hope’s Project Manager did the needed research and found the perfect programme. However, due to their running costs and loss of income they were unable to purchase it.
Project Manager for Rainbow of Hope, Alison Alexander, was grateful for this generous show of support.

“We are struggling at the moment so we are thankful for this additional support that we have received from the team at Hollywoodbets. We are very excited about being able to buy a new programme that will help the children with their school work because they were battling to learn while following the CAPS curriculum. Although the bulk of these funds will be put towards education we will also have some left over that can be used to help meet other important needs like buying food parcels, and paying our water and electricity bill,” she said.
“This is the second time we’ve been in a position to support Rainbow of Hope and we are thrilled to be able to help during what must be a very difficult time for them. When our team visited them the first time we were so impressed with the work they do that we immediately thought of them when we were thinking of beneficiaries to support. We trust that these young people will be able to continue working on their education and that they will benefit so much from this new programme, and we are obviously happy that some of their other needs can be met as well,” said Tania van Eck, Hollywoodbets Western Cape Retail Regional Manager.