Couple among 108 Cape Town volunteers

A Clonmellon husband and wife team are amongst over 100 local volunteers setting off for Cape Town next week as part of the Niall Mellon Township Challenge. Leon and Michelle O"Farrell are among the 2,008 Irish people taking part in the largest ever Niall Mellon Township Trust (NMTT) Building Blitz. It is Leon"s fourth time to travel to South Africa with the workers, and Michelle"s first. 'It"s great to be able to put your skills to work and at the same time have a bit of fun,' Leon, who is a bricklayer, says. 'It is well-organised and you are working to a timetable.' Last year, they worked on semi-detached houses in Cape Town; this year it will be detached homes, he added, saying that each team works on about 15 houses at different stages and those that haven"t a trade help out in other ways by carrying materials or painting. On Friday 28th November, some 2,008 men and women from around Ireland will set off to South Africa, including 108 from Meath. The sixth annual building blitz will see Irish volunteers building a planned 250 houses in Khayelitsha, a township in the city. This blitz is part of an annual one-week volunteer trip organised by the Niall Mellon Township Trust and has been growing steadily since its inception in 2003 when 150 volunteers built 25 houses in the Imizamo Yethu township. Now active in 23 townships, NMTT is the largest charity provider of homes for low income families in South Africa and has built more than 10,000 houses in the last two years. The houses built provide homes for thousands of impoverished families, moving them from one-room shacks to two-bedroom homes with a kitchen and bathroom, running water, electricity and sanitation. On 28th November, the 1,597 men and 411 women from across Ireland will fly to Cape Town for the week-long intensive building campaign. Each day 40 coaches will depart Cape Town with the team of volunteers and travel the 30 kilometres to Khayelitsha, a township with over one million people living in it. Here, the volunteers will be divided up into 29 teams and complete the building of 250 homes. Each of the volunteers had to raise €5,000 in order to make the trip. Work by the Niall Mellon Township Trust continues on a year-round basis, with 2,000 South Africans employed by the charity, the majority of whom come from the townships in which the charity is building homes and communities. This year-round construction provides much-needed employment in the townships in which the NMTT is based, and also follows the ethos of the charity which strives to provide training and skills to people. Since the Niall Mellon Township Trust was founded in 2002. More than 5,000 Irish volunteers have participated in building blitzes.