A fundraising night will be held for Zane on September 10. Zane, who is aged 27, broke his neck when he dived into shallow water on Australia Day 2010. Zane was born in South Africa and is the only member of his family in Australia. His mother still lives in South Africa, but is hoping to find a sponsored job to be able to live in Australia.

There will be live bands, food and drinks at the fundraiser and all funds will go directly to Zane. If you are able to help out, provide sponsorship or are interested in attending, email conroyfund@gmail.com.

Elizabeth has asked for help finding employment as she has applied for over 80 jobs since arriving in Sydney in September 2009. She has a Btech Financial Information Systems degree and a Btech Taxation degree. In South Africa she worked for 13 years for SARS doing all types of audits, collections and admin work. She assisted to analyse tax returns and ensure they were completed properly. She was leader for a project at SARS and managed a small team. For the project she was responsible for writing the Internal Audit Control Policy for VAT/GST Property Transactions Transfers. For the team she set goals, targets and KPIs, trained staff, managed stats and wrote meeting reports. She has also been involved in training SARS staff in the use of computers. She is prepared to do any type of work, including something that is not in the tax field. If you can help please comment here or email Elizabeth directly dongrobb@hotmail.com.

Thanks to those of you who supported the Peters' Family Fundraiser, Comedy Trivia and Silent Auction on April 30 at Petersham Town Hall.

The organisers are still chasing payment for the final few silent action items, but if all payments come through $49,000 will have been raised.

There is still a final item available for auction: It is an exclusive outdoor corporate box for eight guests at the Sydney Swans vs North Melbourne match on July 11, 2010 at Sydney Cricket Ground. The package includes ground and outdoor corporate box entry, drinks, car parking and footy records. Bidding closes at 7pm on Friday May 28. To make a bid, send the following details to danielle_fisher_35@hotmail.com: Name, phone, email, address and bid amount.

SAbona reader Errol Gouws is set to run the Gold Coast Marathon in July to raise funds for South African-born Denzel Peters, who broke his neck and sustained a catastrophic spinal cord injury that left him with quadriplegia in January.

Errol started the ball rolling by donating $100 to the Peters family and hopes that other readers will support him by sponsoring any amount, which will be handed over in total to the Peters family after the marathon.

Company sponsors will be recognised in the August/September issue of SAbona magazine.

It will be Errol's fourth Gold Coast Marathon, but his first as a 60 year old, and he only started running less than four years ago. Errol says that he suffered one of the biggest shocks of his life when earlier this year when he fell of a ladder, but was lucky to be unhurt. “Then I read about Denzel, who is half my age and fell into water. I fell two metres and escaped quadriplegia. It really motivated me to do something.”

If you are able to sponsor Errol, contact him directly at errolgouws@hotmail.com.

South African Zane Conroy, who is aged 27, broke his neck when he dived into shallow water on Australia Day 2010. Rendered a quadriplegic, Zane's C2 to C7 vertebrae were fused and he was in ICU for three weeks. After four weeks in high care, Zane was transferred to the Royal Rehabilitation Centre in Ryde, Sydney. He's likely to be there for four to six months.

Zane's mother Berdene Weil, who still lives in South Africa, has been visiting her son and describes him as an exceptional man, who deems himself lucky. He views it as a blessing that he is able to breathe on his own, see, hear, speak and have full brain function.

Some of their current challenges:

• Zane has no family in Australia and his mother Berdene is desperate to come to Australia to be near her only child. She is currently visiting on a tourist visa and flies back to South Africa on Saturday. She is hoping to find work and a 457 visa sponsorship anywhere in Australia to be nearer to Zane. She has been running her own décor business in South Africa and doing project management of domestic renovations for five years. She has a strong background in sales, admin and management. You can contact Berdene directly on berdene@telkomsa.net.
• Zane's housemates are looking for a suitable house to rent, with close proximity to transport into the city. The biggest challenge is finding a house with a large enough bathroom to fit a wheelchair.
• As Zane is not yet an Australian citizen he will need to buy equipment estimated at between $30,000 and $50,000, and pay for a carer for around four hours a day (estimated at about $1,000 per week).

For more updates on Zane's rehabilitation, and details of the fund that has been set up, join the Facebook page Zane Conroy get well fund. http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=294824393616.

Petro, who is a widow based on the Gold Coast is desperate for an accountant, financial manager type of position.

She moved to Australia about 21 months ago after being promises a job, however, on arrival the company was experiencing financial difficulties and could not give her the employment promises.

She worked for a not for profit organisation in Southport for 10 months, but they were not able to offer her full-time employment.

She's currently living off her retirement money and as a single mum is especially concerned about the implications of this.

In South Africa Petro worked for Goldchem and Rand Refinery for 18 months and worked through the ranks at SABC between 1993 and 2008. She was the general manager: finance when she left SABC to come to Australia.

She can work on the Gold Coast and is prepared to work in Brisbane, although she needs to fetch her son, who is age 11, from after care by 6pm.

Donations have been received which have allowed us to buy a hospital bed and other equipment that Jessica will need when she comes home. Therapies have been offered, fundraising events have been organized and offers of help with visits have been given.

The Gold Coast community are to be congratulated. This week Karen flew to Melbourne to seek advice for Jessica's therapy by specialists in the neurology field, and they were amazed at the support that Jessica was receiving.

Jessica still has a tracheostomy, a gastric feeding tube and has limited movement. Her only form of communication comes from her eye movements. So Dream Workers is trying to raise money to buy a machine that Jessica can utilise simply by moving her eyes. Jessica is just starting to learn to move her hands and feet again with the great work of some volunteer physiotherapists. The aim is to get Jess walking in the next 12 months, along with working on her swallow reflex so that she can have her tracheostomy removed.

If you are able to help out, tax deductible donations can be made on: http://www.dreamworkers.com.au/ under Jessica Dunne's appeal page. Or if you are able to offer services in other areas, please call Deb Smith on 0412 389 607 or deb@dreamworkers.com.au

"We would like to thank everyone for all the positive feedback and all those people that tried their best for me to secure a sponsor. The company that I work for has won the case and they prepared to support my application for the permanent residency. A special thanks to Mark Elsing for all your support,it has helped me stay positive and sane. We would like to help people that need someone to talk to, or need help to settle in. Once again thank you so much. What a fantastic website to help all our South Africans here."

• Stephanie-Anne Maritz has secured a job in Adelaide doing PeopleSoft development at the university of South Australia. She can't wait to start working. Christo will wait a little while before he starts looking for work, so that he can make sure that the kids are settled in and taken care of. They thanked Sabona for all the support.
• Brandon Evetts has started a full-time sales job. He expressed his appreciation to all those who have helped. Through the Sabona appeal, he was given food and food vouchers and received assistance to pay the rent. He asked Sabona to please let him and Leeann know if there are other families needing assistance in future, as they would like to help others, even if it’s in a small way, in future.
• Petrus Jonker has started his job in Adelaide. He expressed his appreciation to Sabona as he received an anonymous donation which enabled him to travel to Adelaide for the interview and also to provide food for his family.
• Pieter van Wyk has accepted a position in Rockhampton. He thanked all his fellow ‘Japies’ for their concern and the attempts made to get him employed.

Petrus Jonker emailed us this week as he has been made redundant. He and his wife and their two year old son Gregan are permanent residents in Australia. They also have two daughters Quenette (18) and Twane (16) in South Africa.

Petrus has 16 years experience as a fitter and his wife Annemie worked for Santam in South Africa for 22 years. She has been unable to find work. They originally moved to Brisbane, but relocated for work purposes to Perth, leaving their furniture in Brisbane. However, Petrus was made redundant this week. They have only enough money to pay their living expenses for about three weeks so they urgently need work. They are willing to relocate anywhere in Australia.

Petrus worked for the following companies in South Africa: SAR, Delta motor company, Borget and Ford motor company and was employed by Australia Meat Holdings, Silverise in Australia.

Petrus wrote in his email: “Ek kan enige ding hanteer wat die lewe my toesnou, maar di onreg teen oor my kind skeur my hart in stukke.”

Thank you so much to all of you who have emailed us about the Evetts family. There have been lots of suggestions and offers of various kinds, including some people who wanted to assist financially.

We received this email from the Evetts' Family:

“Leeann and I are deeply humbled by the support we have received from every body and just want to say thank you. We are getting a lot of news from Brisbane, do you know if there is anyone in Perth as that is where we are at the moment? We can't thank you enough for all your help and one day we hope to be in the position to help others.”

In response to a text from Sabona saying that there had been offers of financial assistance, Brandon and Leeann sent the following message:

“Wow! We are so grateful. I didn't know what we were going to do. When we got your sms we both just cried. We don't know how to thank you.”

Christo and Stephanie-Anne Maritz and their two children aged four and two are desperate for our help. Christo and Stephanie-Anne left jobs in South Africa after Christo was offered a job in Perth. He started on a 457 (company sponsored) visa in November last year and returned over Christmas to fetch his family. They all arrived in Perth on January 2 and Christo returned to work three days later. Two days afterwards he was told that he had been made redundant and had two more weeks of work left.

Christo and Stephanie-Anne both set out looking for work, sending their CVs out and talking to anyone that might be of help. They also moved to Canberra to say with family so that they would be more accessible for interviews and positions on the east of Australia. They have obtained a bridging visa E with working rights until June 12 so they have until that date to find alternative employment.

Either Christo or Stephanie-Anne are prepared to be the primary 457 visa holder. Stephanie-Anne is looking for a technical PeopleSoft position, a SQL developer position or an IT manager (project manager or development manager position. Christo is in the construction industry and is looking for a Microstation drafting position in architecture or civil engineering.

This is their story, written by Stephanie-Anne:

Christo, myself and our two children first came to Australia for my brother's wedding in April 2008. We joined my parents for a two week holiday. We spent most of our time in Canberra, but went through to Tuross Heads for a couple of days and spent our last three days in Sydney. Working abroad has always been one of my goals and the main reason for doing my IT degree, but we never came as far as applying for our skilled migration visa. Permanently leaving our families behind was just not something we ever considered. Our children are my parents' only grandchildren and mean the world to them! I could never let my children grow up without their grandparents or my parents grow old without their grandchildren. While we were on holiday, we decided that Christo would go and see a couple of employment agents to find out about job opportunities and show them what he is capable of. We wanted to see if Christo would be able to find employment first, since he has very specialised skills. We went back to South Africa and carried on with our lives. Then, in August, Christo received a call from an employment agent saying that there is a company in Perth that wants to have an interview with him. He had the telephonic interview and he received a formal job offer three weeks later. The point of no-return finally came and we decided to come to Australia. We decided that we would come to Australia for two years to come and work here and to make an informed decision about whether or not to stay in Australia. We first wanted to see if we liked Australia before we decide to move here permanently – see how things work out with us being so far away from our families and how we cope as a family with all the house work (which we never had to do before). It was a really big decision for us. We both held well paying positions in South Africa and we both worked very hard to get where we were in our careers. Deciding to leave all that behind is not a decision that comes easily. Nevertheless, we decided to come to Australia and that we were both still young enough to work our way up in Australia. Our children were also still young enough (our daughter will be 5 in June and our son turned 2 in January), so the move would not affect them too much.

Christo had to start at Hames Sharley in Perth on November 17, 2008. We had three short months to renovate our entire house to get it into a condition to let it out (we bought a fixer-upper that needed a lot of work), pack up the entire house and move to Australia. By the time Christo left on November 14, the renovations to the house were just about finished. Christo kicked off his first three working days in Australia by attending a drafting course in a different software package to the one that he was working in. All was going very well and he returned to South Africa on December 20 for the Christmas holidays and to come and fetch us.

We all returned to Australia on January 1, 2009. Our flight landed in Perth on January 2. Christo took us to a flat with a blow-up mattress and a loan mattress for the kids, one IKEA table with four chairs, some cutlery & crockery, one pan, an iron and an ironing board. The plan was to slowly but surely acquire the furniture we need, but keep to the bare minimum. The first weekend we were in Perth, we bought a washing machine and a tumble dryer. Perth was fabulous! We loved the parks and the beach and the sea and the Swan River. The children were ecstatic about playing on the beach and going for long walks. Although I never thought that I would like living close to the sea, I really enjoyed it.

Christo returned to work on January 5 and I organised myself a contracting job with a company in South Africa. I was planning to do contracting for a couple of months before looking for a position in the Australian job market. On Wednesday, January 7, Christo came home and told me that he had been made redundant and that he had two more weeks of work left. I could not believe what I was hearing. How can a company let an entire family pack up from their home country, just to say “we don't need you anymore” two months later? This was a really big shock to both of us. We talked about a plan and decided that it's best for us to spend our energy on positive things like looking for work instead of dragging Hames Sharley to the labour court. And so we set out looking for work. We sent our CVs to every possible employment agent that was advertising on every possible job engine on the internet. We spoke to friends of friends and to anybody and everybody that might be able to help. We heard two reasons for being unemployable:

1) We were on a 457 visa and the company was not willing to sponsor;

2) The company did not have enough work to justify the employment of another person.

We were on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Every time a company expressed their interest, we were really excited and prayed that THIS would be the job that God would send us to keep us in Australia and every time we were very disappointed when it was not. We were also waiting for the letter from the department of immigration to come and tell us that our visa will be cancelled. I was really, really stressed that 28 days would not be enough to find work. But the letter took much longer than 28 days to arrive. By March 16 we decided that we would not find any work in Perth. A lot of the positions that we applied for on the eastern side of Australia, did not even get acknowledged, since we were in Perth and would not have been able to go for interviews in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Adelaide. So, we decided that we would pack up everything that we have and move to the east of Australia. My brother said that we could stay with them in Canberra for a couple of weeks until we find our feet. The job search carried on in Canberra. We also received a letter from the department of immigration, stating that they were planning to cancel our visa and that we had seven days to contest. We sent through a letter, but received a phone call from the department of immigration stating that they were planning to cancel our visa and they did so in 24 hours! We had to go to immigration to speak to an immigration agent to give us a bridging visa to be legally in Australia. We spoke to a very helpful immigration agent and he gave us a bridging visa E with working rights until June 12, at which stage we have to leave Australia.

We are both still desperately looking for work here in Australia and either one of us can be the primary 457 holder. I spent the first 12 years of my career in very technical positions, doing everything from Unix scripting, to writing code in CERES, which is a language that is similar to COBOL, to developing PeopleSoft components, to writing ETL using Microsoft SSIS, to writing and deploying reports using Microsoft reporting services. I then got offered a position in the application development team, which would move me out of being technical into management. For a techie, this was a pretty big step. It was time to be taken to the edge of my comfort zone. I spent 15 months working as part of the application team – a team of three members that worked closely with the CIO, and that was responsible for the development of new software for the transactional retail system, the maintenance of existing softwarefor the transactional retail system, as well as the roll-out of two major projects where we consolidated the four different transactional retail systems for the entire JD Group into a single platform in just nine months. At the end of it all, the IT department received the chairman's service department of the year award - something I am lead to believe had not happened in a really long time at the JD Group. I am looking for either a technical PeopleSoft position, a SQL developer position or an IT manager (project manager or development manager) position.

Christo is in the construction industry. He is able to do design development and documentation using Microstation (and Triforma) as the tool on anything that is constructible - very proficient with the software means he can 'hit the ground running', so to speak. He is quickly adaptable to different drafting roles having experience in a wide range of disciplines from concept design development, architectural and interior design and documentation to structural documentation. He has also filled the position of software support officer for the last 10 years. He's looking for a Microstation drafting position in architecture or civil engineering.

We would also like to thank everybody that has touched our lives and moved us with their compassion and love. Thanks to H.F. & René for all your love, support and for lending us your car when we needed transport. Thanks to Henri & Heidi Steynberg and kids for your love, compassion and friendship. Thanks to Gail & Dan Bam for rescuing us from the unfurnished apartment and for your love and support. Thanks to our fellow members of Perth Afrikaans Reformed Church for all your prayers, love and support. Thanks to Jandrie & Heather Lombard for opening your lovely home to us when we didn't have anywhere else to go. Thanks to our fellow members of New Life Presbyterian Church for all your prayers, love and support. Thanks to our loving parents/grandparents for your support, compassion and advice. Each one of you has touched our lives deeply and made us richer beings. God bless you all!

Many of our appeals have focused on breadwinners who have been made redundant and urgently need to find employment. In addition to doing what we can for those people, we are currently also helping a South African family who desperately need us in a different way.

Rick (15) and Marcus (4) Fortier were badly burned in February when a drum in which they were burning rubbish exploded. They have been living on a farm in Condamine, about four hours west of Brisbane.

They were immediately flown to hospital in Brisbane. Rick, who tried to shield Marcus from the fire and suffered burns to about 35% of his body, is likely to spend a total of about three in hospital. After spending some time in hospital Marcus was discharged and at the time of writing is being treated as an outpatient. They have both undergone skin grafting operations.

The family moved here from South Africa at the end of November 2008. The boy's father, a farm manager, is on a 457 visa sponsored by the farm on which they are living. The medical bills are extensive – the hospital expects that they will come to at least $200,000 – and the boys are not covered by medical insurance.

Sabona is also calling on the South African community to do what we can for this family. The current times are tough for all of us, but Sabona and the Fortier family would really appreciate any donation, no matter what, that you are able to make.

We would also like to express our gratitude to Condamine Seeds and Tyres, the company for which the boy's mom works. They have launched an appeal and are asking for donations, holding fundraising events and donating various things to the family.

Options for providing a financial donation through Sabona are outlined on our website http://appeal.sabona.com.au/donation.ews. Please mention that this is for the Fortier family.

If you would like to offer any other kind of assistance to the Fortier family, email info@sabona.com.au.

As soon as we have a list of needs or things that could help bring a smile to the boy's faces we will add these to the blog.

• Put up information about jobs needed
• Offer help of any kind to people from Southern Africa based in Australia -- this may be in the form of having a cup of coffee, offering to babysit or even just being willing to answer some of the questions that new arrivals have
• Advertise job opportunities that are available, especially those suitable for people who need a457 visa

We are hearing of more and more families that are being forced to go back to South Africa as a result of their 457 visas being cancelled due to their sponsors' financial pressures.

Mark has been fortunate to be offered a job as a project manager today at 15:00 - sales with Sign A Rama in Burswood and they will make a really good sponsor with all the right things in place. The employer is very positive about Mark and the excellent skills he brings to the business.

Hi Philip
 
I just wanted to relay my gratitude to both yourself, Sabona and everyone that has "chipped in" and offered their support and help.  I have said it before, but would like to say it again: We as a family could not have got this far without all these efforts and encouragement.  If you want to relay my gratitude through your communication network i would have no problem with that.  While this is very stressful, we somehow see the light at the end of the tunnel through the camaraderie and unity amongst fellow South Africans, immigration is by no means easy and I think Sabona go's along way to unite and bring some semblance into our lives.
 
A big thank you to everyone, especially you and Letitia.
 
Cheers for now.
MARK

• Consider sponsoring him in a Project Management position,
• Assist with finding him sponsorship ASAP,
• or donate a small amount of money to help support this struggling family including any possible legal assistance.