Rising above challenges

THE skies of Cape Town will provide international kiters with a huge blue canvass to showcase their beautiful creations and skilful kite flying at the 2016 International Kite Festival in Muizenberg at the weekend.

Apart from the event being Africa’s largest kite festival, it is also South Africa’s biggest mental health awareness event, with profits to help provide vital mental health services to children and adults in Cape Town and beyond.

The Cape Mental Health’s (CMH) Heideveld Special Education and Care Centre welcomed participating kiters from as far as Canada, Germany, the UK, New Zealand and Singapore, where children from schools in the area were able to view the kites.

According to the NGO, of every 1 000 people living in the Western Cape, 25 have a low IQ of between 50 and 70 – while in the general population of South Africa, 16.5 percent are diagnosed with some sort of mental illness.

For many living with a mental health illness, it is an issue kept hidden from those closest for fear of stigmatisation and discrimination. And a lack of understanding from support structures at home, and in the workplace, often exacerbates their daily battle. The festival aims to tackle this with the theme #BornToFly.

Welcoming the kiters, CMH director Ingrid Daniels said participants had accepted the invitation to assist them in raising much-needed funds to provide mental health services in poor and under-resourced communities in the Western Cape.

“As your kites take flight over the next few days against the powerful winds of Cape Town, the message to all those living with mental disability is that they have the potential to rise above any obstacle. That they were born to fly and soar against the mighty winds of stigma, discrimination and (human) barriers,” Daniels said.

“We live with enormous stress and the recent events in our country have challenged the very fabric of our mental health. The festival comes at a time when people across South Africa are really needing to enjoy an event where their eyes are lifted to the sky and all those challenges are miles away.”

Like these kiters from around the world and at home, we need to speak out against discrimination and be the support structure those with a mental disability need.

No matter the mental disability, everyone needs to feel the sky’s the limit.