Wilge Special Care Day Care Centre

The Wilge Special Care Day Care Centre is one of the projects of the Orion Foundation which is dedicated to caring and providing for the educational, training and therapeutic needs of children, youth and adults living with physical, mental, intellectual and neurological disabilities. They focus on children with special needs between the ages of 18 months and 18 years old.

The centre was the beneficiary of our 2005 ball and we have continued to support them in various ways since then. Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists and Speech Therapists, amongst others, are needed daily, yet funding for the therapists is always difficult to secure and therefore erratic. This means that the Centre does not have constant support from therapists to work with the children.

In attempting to alleviate this problem, The Solstice Foundation proposed offering a bursary for a promising Grade 12 student from a school in the surrounding area who would like to pursue a career in the Human Sciences and at the end of 2009 the Solstice Foundation awarded a bursary to Laura de Wet, a matriculant from Atlantis Secondary School to study at the University of the Western Cape.

In 2010 we assisted them in the financing of one of the much-needed therapists who works with the children on a daily basis and which is vital to the development of the children at the Centre. And in 2013, the Solstice Foundation donated a further R55,000 to Wilge for its ongoing therapy requirements.