An annual grant from Camphill Foundation UK & Ireland to the Camphill-Orion Fund has helped disabled and disadvantaged children in South Africa to receive speech therapy, physiotherapy and other specialist treatments and assessments.

The Orion Organisation is based in the town of Atlantis in the Western Cape. It was established in 1982 and runs a day-care centre for children with physical and mental disabilities, has group homes for sixty adults with disabilities and a frail care centre for ten sick, aged and frail people with disabilities.

Orion was inspired by Camphill, with one of its founders being Renate Sleigh, daughter of Camphill founder Dr. Karl Koenig.

The Camphill-Orion Fund has paid for two therapists to work with the children in the day-care centre each week.Twenty to thirty children attend each day with transport bringing them from as far as 50 or 60 miles away.

Without the money raised by Camphill communities in the UK and Ireland and the grant from the Camphill Foundation, the children, many of them with severe multiple disabilities, would not receive the therapies and treatments that make such a difference to their lives.