Our 'why'

We want you to enjoy a wonderful stay filled with fun, laughter and lasting memories but we also want to benefit those further afield and less fortunate.

For this reason, we support two projects which we think do this. One is in Madagascar and the other is in South Africa. The revenue from your stay helps fund these projects and, in turn, changes lives - one life at a time. You are therefore helping to give back to some of the most vulnerable and impoverished people on our planet.

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."

Mother Theresa

Madagascar - Hospital Project

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries of the world with 70 - 80% of the population considered to be living below the poverty line. It is also suffering from climate-change exacerbated famine.

We support a hospital in the Mandritsara district. Though the district is the size of Yorkshire, there is only one tarred road of about 50 miles. Vast swathes of the area are inaccessible even to 4x4 vehicles for all but a few months at the end of the dry season each year. Almost all villages have no electricity supply or running water. Even the simplest of toilets were absent in most villages until a recent initiative led by the Community Health department of the hospital. Agriculture in the Mandritsara district is subsistence farming of rice and cattle. There is no mechanisation. Ploughing is with an ox-drawn single plough. Planting, reaping and threshing is all done by hand.

Health-care is basic and limited in rural Madagascar and the Mandritsara district is typical of the whole country. Infant mortality is high and life expectancy is low. There is a government hospital in Mandritsara offering basic medical and maternity care, but the nearest government surgical facility is in Antsohihy, 200km away. Before the Good News Hospital opened, patients needing emergency surgery – a Caesarean Section, for example – had to hire a car and travel these 200km. Patients may have taken up to 2 days or even more to reach Mandritsara from the periphery of the district, particularly in the rainy season. The Good News Hospital provides medical, surgical, maternity and ophthalmology services (including cataract surgery) to the population of 250,000 in the Mandritsara district, though many patients come from even further.

South Africa - orphan care

AIDS. Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome. For most people, HIV/AIDS is something that affects the lives of others and we struggle to relate to the overwhelming statistics that we hear. For a country of just over 56 million people, HIV/AIDS is an integral part of the lives of many South Africans. AIDS has taken away their sons and daughters; deprived them of mothers and fathers and left a country overwhelmed with orphaned children who are without basic love, care, or spiritual teaching and guidance. AIDS is real, it is devastating, and it is a threat to their future. As this generation of adults succumbs to AIDS, they leave behind those who are least able to care for themselves.

Throughout the country, there over 200,000 households which are run by children. It is hard for us to imagine children, aged 10 or 11, attempting to raise their younger siblings. They are not equipped to get jobs, provide food, shelter, money for school fees, clothing, etc. The short term complications are obviously very difficult and these children are often exploited or in positions where they can be abused. When you consider the long-term impact on their education and lives, it is heart-breaking to know that their futures will be so different and difficult from what would be have been had they been in a family with parents.

Bethesda places children with a loving family that includes a father, mother and siblings. The children are selected on the basis of need, and it is Bethesda’s goal to care for children who have no living relatives who are able to meet their needs.