Byline: Kelebogile Masemola
27 July 2022
The newly created Hammanskraal Art and Sports Awards (HASA) hosted an exhibition with the aim of unifying and introducing related activities in the community.
The exhibition took place on Saturday, 23 July 2022 at Jubilee Mall in Hammanskraal.
It serves as a platform to provide sports personnel and artists in Hammanskraal the opportunity to be recognised and celebrated as well as to promote community building through Art and Sports.
“Our mission is to help especially upcoming artists and sports people to rise and shine,” Chairperson of HASA, Oreneile Ramela said.
Ramela said they came to the realisation that Sports and Art are not recognised much in Hammanskraal because there is little exposure.
“A great deal of people do not know what to do with their spare time because they lack information about organisations that are there in the community.
We are reaching out to people to celebrate their work and efforts, we want them to be encouraged to do it even more.
Wondered why many children are still in the streets? Well one of the reasons is that they do not know where to invest their time and energy because Art and Sports programmes and movements are not exposed that much in other parts of Hammanskraal,” said Ramela.
Ramela said different organisations and individuals came on Saturday morning to showcase what they do.
“These individuals and businesses deal with different things, some of them teach drama classes, others do sculpting and more.
Basically they were showcasing their art and sport, they gave out information to the public about what it is that they offer,” said Ramela.
She said it was vital that sports other than soccer were introduced to the community.
“It is not every child in the community that is able to play soccer or netball.
They will never know what they are good at as long as they are not introduced to new sports.
“It’s important that children or anyone in the community who is interested in sports know different types of sports so that they can reach their potential.”
She said perfect examples were volley ball and hockey, which were not popular sports in Hammanskraal.
“We need to get more people involved in sports, we are also tackling community development.
If we are a community of people that are going to be involved in different sports we will be united because we fall under the same umbrella,” she said.
Among other activities at the exhibition was a donation drive and indigenous games.
She said for the donation drive food parcels, clothes, appliances and other donations were accepted.
“Our vision is seeing Hammanskraal setting a standard and a mark.
We will mainly host awards, as well as to co-work with other NPO’s/NGO’s in bettering the work of others.
Our awards will help artists and sports people to promote themselves and getting their names known throughout Hammanskraal, by making sure they put on their A-Game and ask people to vote for them in the process.
We aim at ensuring that these people are well celebrated and that Hammanskraal be unified in the process,” Ramela said.
Donations and/or sponsorship can be made to the organisation via 069 110 3261.