On Tuesday I had such a good day at work! I arrived at 8 and drove out with my boss to Khayelitsha—one of the townships that my organization does a lot of their work in—to visit a school that we have a program in.
Khayelitsha means “new home” is xhosa and it was created in the early ‘80s under the apartheid regime. It’s now the biggest township in Cape Town and home to over a million people (although there’s no way to get an exact number since people are moving in there every day). It is one of those townships that you would see in a picture with shacks made of tin scraps, plastic and whatever else they can get their hands on. There is no electricity and limited water faucets that provide the water for large amounts of people in an area.
The school we visited is called Sakumlandela Primary School and it is for grades R (kindergarten) or maybe just 1-9. Most primary schools only go up to grades 6 or 7 so this one is unique. This is a really good school I guess and my boss said it’s because of the amazing principle there. Education in South Africa is not free but Sakumlandela is an example of a no fee school that allows impoverished children to attend school.
Mamelani became involved in this school almost two years ago, thanks to an existing relationship with another organization at the school. The existing organization identified many student cases that needed to be addressed and needed help meeting the needs of the children. Mamelani hired a man to become a counsellor at the school so that everyday there was a source of support for the children and teachers are able to refer children to him. Mamelani pays the counsellor’s salary so that it is of no cost to the school. The aim of this program is to provide holistic support to keep kids in school. Each student that is referred is assessed to provide the kind of support that they need (this included material support in the form of stationary, uniforms or other supplies that the student cannot afford). Through a holistic approach, Mamelani understands that intervention is undermined if you only work with the children and not the whole situation that has made this child vulnerable. This is why, included in this program are home visits and weekly parent meetings and workshops.
In Khayelitsha there are many obstacles that stand in the way of children and a proper education. The morning we got there the women who works with the other organization, a good friend of my boss, found out that a girl in grade one was hit and killed by a truck on her way home from school the day before. While she was very upset, she said that things like that happen quite often and through doing some research I found that traffic safety was included in most curriculum from grade R. While accidents like this happen in the states, so much of the high occurrences of them here is due to the lack of a system to provide safety and protection for school children causing survival to be a very real obstacle to education.
Included in survival is the high rate of abuse that occurs in many homes in Khayelitsha. A bad family life and no support for education is probably the greatest challenge with keeping kids enrolled and motivated in school. Many kids get a late start with their education or take a long time to get through it so there are kids who are 18 years old and in 7th, 8th, 9th grade. While there is obviously a challenge in keeping an 18 year old motivated to finish primary school with the other kids in their classes being so much younger, another major challenge at this age is making sure they have a good living situation. A major reason for a child being old for their grade is a lack of support at home. For many, if this is addressed at a young age they can be placed in foster care where they will receive the support that they need to finish school. However, foster care ends at 18, so it is unlikely to be placed when you are older, like 14-17. This makes it extremely challenging because an alternative option for intervention must be created to make sure that the needs of the child are being met and they are able to finish their schooling.
Another cool program going on at the school is their school garden. 6 or more bathtubs are used for worm bins and there are many beds providing flowers, herbs, and veggies to be used in the school food program, which provides meals (sometimes the only meal they will receive for the day) for the students. I was so impressed by the garden and I realized that community gardening and school garden programs is an area I would definitely like to become more involved in as far as possible careers go. I think it’s an amazing way to get children involved and invested in their nutrition. It also provides an incredible sense of community through a sustainable method of growth while providing the essential needs to individuals and communities alike.
The whole reason we were at the school was to meet with the Department of Social Development so that they could ask final questions to help them to make a decision regarding their funding of the program. I was so excited to get to sit in on a site visit like this! It was an opportunity to get to see the stuff I’ve been learning in school carried out in real life. In my Aid to Developing Countries course that I took in the fall, we did a simulation over the term where we had donor agencies and countries and as a donor agency my group had to come to a decision about how much funding we were providing each country. It was really interesting and as I sat in on this meeting I couldn’t help thinking about this class. I sat there as they met trying to write down everything I could!
The people from DOSD seemed kind of rushed, which was a shame and they seemed to ask very basic, logistical questions, which made Carly (my boss) and Monika (the project director for this program) a little disappointed. They had hoped that the people would want to talk to people working at the school to see the effects of the program and stuff like that, but instead they seemed to be more interested in budgets and the basic workings of the program. They left the meeting not feeling too great about how it went and not expecting too much funding to come from them, which is a shame. Having been my first experience with anything like this I had no idea how to tell how it went and I was just pumped to have been there! If the DOSD decides to provide any funding it will go through around the end of March.
We went back to the office and I finished my day off as normal, but I was still so excited to have gotten to visit the site and sit in on the meeting (even if it was brief and potentially not so great of a turn out). I learned so much about this program—and once again fell in love with it—and the kind of things that organizations are doing to provide the kind of ongoing support that is crucial to children’s lives.
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