At a dinner in Johannesburg on Saturday, February 2 the Freemasons of South Africa North, of which both the Louis Trichardt Lion of The North Lodge and Messina Lodge are part, donated R1 million to the Charity Headway.

Headway is a support and care group for victims of brain injury and their families. There vision is to provide an environment where brain injured people and their families can feel accepted, comfortable and secure to become competent and confident to the best of their abilities, and to create challenges to aid them in achieving these goals. Headway provides individual and family support, as well as well as running and activity centre run by a speech therapist with a team of occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, biokineticists and a music therapist.

The donation by the Freemasons of South Africa North is part of an annual effort by the lodges of the district to give a donation to one organization which is large enough to make a significant impact on the receiving organization. Last year the Freemasons donated R1 million to Reach for Recovery, a support group for women who have survived breast cancer, and  past recipients of these significant donations have included Childline, Reach for a Dream, the Avril Elizabeth home for mentally handicapped, the Nelson Mandela Children’s fund and the Guide Dogs Association.

In addition to contributing to the R1 million donation to Headway, the members of Lion of the North and Messina Lodges in the last year have joined forces to help destitute pensioners in Zimbabwe.

Some of these pensioners retired about ten years ago on what were then comfortable pensions and they now find that because of the effects of the rampant inflation in Zimbabwe their entire annual pension cannot buy one loaf of bread.

As it is pointless sending donations of money to an area where there is no food to buy in the shops, the members of the local lodges have been collecting and buying food and making regular trips to the retirement homes in Bulawayo and Harare. The pensioners have now requested that in addition to food staples that they be given gardening implements, fertilizer  and vegetable seed in order that they may grow their own food and become once again self sufficient to some extent.