12-Year-Old Expat’s ‘Sunshine Bag Project’ Brings Smiles and Essentials to Roodepoort Children

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From South Carolina with Love! Though her family left South Africa nine years ago, Arabella was moved to raise funds to purchase, pack and hand-deliver 40 care bags to vulnerable children at Dorah’s Ark children’s home.

Roodepoort, South Africa (25 September 2026) – Robyn King and her family left South Africa nine years ago, first moving to Canada and then, two years ago, to the United States. Yet, regardless of how many miles now stretch between them and their homeland, South Africa has always stayed close to their hearts – a love that clearly rubbed off on their 12-year-old daughter, Arabella.

While it’s easy for kids who leave home at a young age to lose that connection with their home country, the same can’t be said for Arabella. Now a seventh-grader living in South Carolina, she felt a strong pull to give back to a South African charity, making a truly meaningful difference by providing shelter and care for abused, vulnerable, abandoned, and orphaned children.

“Over her summer break in May and June, she decided to raise funds to purchase and pack backpacks for children at Dorah’s Ark, a children’s home in Roodepoort, South Africa. She called her initiative The Sunshine Bag Project,” Arabella’s mother, Robyn, tells us.

Arabella set up a table at several local farmers’ markets, and she and her sisters also held a few lemonade stands in their neighbourhood, giving away free lemonade in exchange for donations.

“People were extraordinarily generous. Some donated as much as $50 for a glass of lemonade! We were completely blown away by the support,” Robyn says.

Arabella ultimately raised enough to put together 40 backpacks. She chose colourful bags, made a beaded name chain for each child, and ironed a Sunshine Bag Project patch onto every backpack.

When they travelled to South Africa in June for a family holiday, they brought all 40 backpacks with their luggage. Once on home soil, they went on a shopping spree to fill the bags with useful and fun items, including toiletries and toiletry bags, stationery, hats and gloves for the South African winter, some sweets, and a Springbok T-shirt for every child.

“Towards the end of our trip, we visited Dorah’s Ark in Roodepoort, where Arabella personally handed each child their backpack. It was an incredibly special day for her, and for all of us.”

Arabella now plans to make The Sunshine Bag Project an annual initiative, if timing and travel allow, with the hope of providing different much-needed items like sanitary products or school supplies to children in need.

For this young philanthropist, one of the most important parts of the project is maintaining a connection with the country where she was born and finding a way to contribute to the good happening in it, even though she now lives thousands of miles away.