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Work for Love administers a
sponsorship programme that currently finances the ongoing
education of three Masiphumelele students at Fish Hoek and
Simons Town High Schools. We also sponsor a child at Sun Valley
Primary School and run the sponsorship programme for the
Siyakhula Play School. Sponsorship donations are linked to a
student whose progress the sponsors will be able to follow.
Siyakhula Play
School
In October 2008, Lucia
together with 6 other mothers from the wetlands informal
settlement next to the Masiphumelele Township started the
Siyakhula Play School in Lucia’s own home. This decision came
shortly after a three year old went missing and was found
murdered in their neighbourhood. Their wish was to provide a safe
and nurturing environment for the children, whose parents are
unemployed and unable to send the children to a crèche. A crèche
in Masi costs R 150/month). Entire families often live off the
monthly child support grant which is R 285/month/child.
Unaccompanied children can be found playing in the dirty water
and picking rotten fruit out of the rubbish where the spaza shops
(tiny general wares shops often run from out of the back of the
owner's house)
have dumped their spoiled wares.
When Lucia approached Work
for Love, she and the 6 women not only spent each day looking
after the 26 children but contributed R 100 each/month to buy
food to cook a meal for the children.
Work for Love has helped the
Play School set up a Management Committee, a budget and a bank
account. A volunteer is training the treasurer in transparent
accounting and guiding the management committee. We are working
towards registering the play school with the Department of
Social Development to receive government funding. This is a long
term process. It is illegal to have a school in the wetlands but
places to rent are scarce and not in the area of need and plots
to buy are totally over priced and hard to come by.
We have started a sponsorship programme and already have found
sponsors for 10 children. Sponsorship per month is R 220/child.
This covers food, toys, rent, teachers' salaries and their
training to become Educare teachers.
Work for Love’s volunteers
take the children on outings to the beach, the library and a
local playground. We have donated table chairs and tables,
pictures, books and toys. The volunteers have taken the teachers
in turn to a local Waldorf Kindergarten to give them ideas on
how to stimulate the children in an age appropriate way. Two
teachers will start the Waldorf Educare Training in 2010. One
trainee teacher spends two days a week telling a story and doing
craft and ring-time activities with the children.
Volunteers take children to
the clinic. Common problems are malnourishment, scabies and
worms. We also provide free nutritious e-pap for the underweight
children.
The Imhoff Waldorf School
donates vegetables each Wednesday and one family provides
sandwiches and fruit.
One Christmas a volunteer
arranged for R 2000 worth of food parcels to be given to the
teachers and families of the school. We have built an extra
class room and fenced the outside play area.
In November, Lucia, the founder, had water on her lungs and was
diagnosed with a hole in her heart. She died on December 10th
before the open-heart surgery that was
scheduled for January. However, she had asked us and her sister-in-law, Asanda, to carry her work forward.
There is so much more we
would like to do. We are hoping to buy a building to house 4
classrooms and to register with both the Department of Social
Development and the Federation of Waldorf Schools as a new
initiative Waldorf School. Today the school cares for 42 children. |
