“Hope has wings; butterfly wings”.

The words are inscribed on a plaque as you enter Butterfly House, instilling in you an immediate understanding of what drives this dynamic organisation. Hope.

The SAWIP team had the privilege to join the Drakenstein Palliative Hospice and Butterfly House in celebrating Hospice week. While marching through the streets surrounded by singing and poster-waving children, a young lady of 6 years old struck up a conversation with me about the cat running across the road.

She proudly informed me that she treated cats. Thoroughly amused, and slightly confused, I asked her if she was a vet, only to be informed that she was a doctor. Or that she was training to become one and would one day look after me if I was ill. I could feel my heart stir, and not just from sympathy for the neighbourhood cats.

This young girl had hope.

Charles Snyder, pioneer of positive psychology, defines hope as: “the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals”. Willpower is, of course the drive to achieve a goal; waypower is the strategies and mental roadmaps crafted for goal achievement.

This young girl certainly displayed willpower, a gift Butterfly House has certainly given her. A SAWIP team member remarked that he did not see a marginalised mindset in the children. They did not feel oppressed by their environment or see how it should necessarily restrict their future lives; a beautiful, freeing mindset. But as an employee of Butterfly House reflected, realistic goals keeps hope alive.

One of the values Butterfly House tries to instil in these children is self-confidence. The staff and volunteers treat these children with such loving care and provision that the children of Fairyland feel valued. The children I saw marching through the streets were proud of their Butterfly House and Hospice; they felt worthy and loved.

This sense of worth and self-confidence will have children dreaming, planning brighter futures as they value themselves. It will give them willpower, the core component of hope.

The other component is waypower. Butterfly House nurtures these children holistically. They provide health education as well as health care professionals. Play-therapy affords psychosocial support. They also assist the families of children in sustaining a hale and healthy life. For the older youth they teach life skills, of justice, ethos, ethics and accountability. They have skill development programs and they even teach the children ballroom dancing and singing and art; means of self expression and coping mechanisms.

These children are taught how to handle life’s knocks as best they can. That is waypower.

Hope, to me, is energy. It is the final spurt of power that you get in the face of adversity by knowing you have the willpower and the waypower to overcome. It is the vigour with which you tackle not only troubled times, but your everyday life when you have the anticipation of victory or accomplishment. Hope breathes activity into your life; dreams into your mind’s heart.

That is why the personification of the butterfly image is so beautifully appropriate: the butterfly needs to struggle to achieve metamorphosis. Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho retold a story at a recent book launch, entitled “The Lesson of the Butterfly”.

The narrative speaks of a man who watches a butterfly struggle to break free from its cocoon. After hours have passed the cocoon was scarred only by a small hole, the exhausted butterfly still trapped inside. As the creature becomes absolutely still, the man tries to open the cocoon with a pair of scissors. He finds the butterfly crumpled and wrapped in wrinkled wings. The man waits for the butterfly to spread its wings, hoping it would come alive and fly away. It did not. It’s shrunken body merely shuddered, incapable of flight.

What the man did not understand was that the butterfly has to struggle to emerge viably from the cocoon. The struggle was nature’s way to strengthen its wings. It prepares them for the troublesome life that would follow its brief fight.

Hope sustains that fighting energy in us. As life is strengthening the wings of the children of Fairyland, Butterfly House is working to keep them energetic and struggling to achieve metamorphosis. Butterfly House is equipping them with willpower and waypower to emerge from the cocoon.

And spread their wings.