Scouts from 1st Blaauwberg in the Western Cape started digging up the garden area at the Home of Hope Shelter. Home of Hope is a shelter for abandoned, abused, neglected and HIV positive children. This is a Group led by Assistant Troop Scouter, Ashley Clutten and they ran a renovations project at Home of Hope. The digging was to see what the soil was like; Scouts dug two middle holes and discovered that there were layers of broken concrete. This slowed the process down quite a lot and left them with a load of extra waste. They proceeded to remove the waste using a wheelbarrow. They ended up digging two and a half of the six holes that day. Taking turns with the sander to sand down the two small benches out back. The Group went back to the shelter and they continued digging up the concrete layers, removing some pretty large slabs. The digging process was tedious as the soil was dry and filled with concrete, it made separating the sand and concrete chips difficult. The process of lifting the wheel barrow also slowed the Scouts down as there was no path from the garden directly to the back of the shed that wasn’t sandy. The Group took the large concrete slabs and laid out a path so the wheelbarrow could be rolled up the slope. They managed to dig out all the holes, with each hole measuring at least 3m2 and 35cm deep. They estimated it at 3 cubes of sand per hole, which in turn meant they managed to shovelled a total of 18 tons of sand. We they finally laid the pure sand mix with compost back into the holes, ready for top soil and planting. It was a relatively quick process compared to the excavation. On the 15th of June, spirits were high as the Scouts tackled the sanding and varnishing of the one side of the Wendy house. They had some Scouts doing rough sand to take the flaking layer off the wood, while the others would follow up with the varnishing. It was a pleasant day for all as varnishing and sanding proved to be less labour than shovelling sand. And on the 17th of June, it was a long weekend due to Youth Day, attendance was poor, so the Group leader decided to do a smaller task and shorten the hours so they could finish the projects. They hand sanded the small benches to remove the outer layer. And had thick layers of varnish on, but their intention was to repaint them instead, as removing all the dark varnish would be impossible. They painted a coat of pink primer on the benches. So that the wood would be protected before we did the final paint job. Some challenges that the Group faced were due to planning, their original plan was to have individual Patrols come each week, however poor attendance and some Scouts needing hours for school, made the Group leader changed his plans. The first problem that was unexpected was the amount of rubble underneath the garden, which explained why previously nothing could grow. This made it extremely hard to shovel the sand as each successive attempt at digging resulted in a concrete layer, which had to be removed by digging around it. This caused a time delay on the project. The second challenge was encountered when the Group ran out of compost. They underestimated how bad the quality of the sand was, but managed to solve this by filling the holes but not applying top soil- to that the compost wouldn’t be wasted until they planted.