It took a 22-year-old emerging model a couple of days to seek out sponsors for her wish to donate products to a home-based care centre in the Nzhelele area.

Young and beautiful Tendani "Tendy" Mutshembele is a finalist in the Miss Limpopo 2012 competition. She secured donors for toiletries, food, clothes, boxes of toys and sanitary pads, school bags, and bed sheets. She then handed all these products as gifts to the little ones at the Takalani Children's Home, at Siloam in Nzhelele, on Monday afternoon.

The centre is home to more than 50 children from vulnerable backgrounds, who have been abandoned, orphaned, neglected and abused. It was founded in 1988.

“Tendani is a lovely young woman who also loves other people,” says the chairperson of the Takalani Children's Home, Mr Eric Netshivhulana. “She seems to have an optimistic foresight, and when she moves among the children, you can tell that children are dear to her.”

Tendani is the only finalist from the Vhembe district in the top 10 of the Miss Limpopo 2012 competition. The Ha-Radali-born maiden attributes her stable character to her passion and love for giving to the community. She attended Gondeni Primary and Tshivhase Secondary School.

“Miss Limpopo is about working with the community through charity projects,” she says confidently. “It plants back hope among the needy and underprivileged. Due to this, all the finalists were assigned to create charity projects.”

An LLB student at the University of Limpopo, she says that she saw the assignment of a charity project as a gateway to her dream of initiating a charity organisation, called Sacred Star. “My purpose of working with Takalani Children’s home is to help meet some of the home’s basic needs,” she speaks.

A number of businesses and some individuals responded to her call of donations. Hayani Guest House and Caterers, Dr Brian Tshivhase, Lufuno Seabe and Ntaka Tshifaro assisted in various ways. “I managed to collect several bags of clothes and MMS restaurant dished out a great lunch for all the children,” she says.

The soft-spoken Tendani says she plans on working hard in her project and all other projects for Miss Limpopo. “I strongly believe that children are sacred and innocent. They should be protected and cared for,” she concludes.