500 volunteers prepare for South Africa building blitz

Five hundred Irish volunteers are heading to South Africa this morning to take part in the latest blitz of house-building by the Niall Mellon Township Trust.

Over the next week, the group aims to build 75 houses in a township outside Cape Town.

The buildings will provide accommodation for 900 people who are currently living in mud shacks in the area.

This year, the number of female volunteers on the trip outnumbers the number of male volunteers for the first time since the house-building programme started in 2002.

The Niall Mellon Trust has built more than 11,000 houses in South Africa since then.