What about the children? And other news....

At the Project:

Department of social welfare are closing a lot of early education facilities down and they have been giving us a hard time on quite a few levels.  I have visited a few of these places that has been closed down end of 2010 and they are still closed. What saddens me is the question: "what about the children?" Where are they now and why are the Department not starting Early Education Facilities themselves. Early September there will be a meeting at Government level in Cape Town and we will have a representative to attend this meeting.

 

What is most important  is that we do need to move forward and do more for these children.

 

The Department requires all staff to have a certain level of education to work with the children. When we started the project for us it was important to "take care" of the children and employed "carers". Important was also to give people from the Plakkerskamp these jobs so that at least some families will have a better income.

 

For the last 18 months I have put in a lot of effort to get staff on training programmes. But I have also realised that my staff at Bonniepeople are not teachers, so even if I send them for training they are not able to apply learning techniques to the children what they have learned.

 

After a lot of discussions, dissapointments and receiving a lot of advice from people working with the same sort of projects there are some very heart wrenching changes to be made at the project.

 

So there will be a lot happening at Bonniepeople at the end of 2011.

 

I have informed staff at the project that I will not be renewing their contracts with Bonniepeople from January 2012.

 

I will be advertising for trained people to take up teaching positions at Bonniepeople from 2012. .

 

We are giving the present staff advice and support to search for other jobs, and also to go on different courses in the fields that they are more interested in.

 

We are reminding them each month about the ending of their contracts and that we are there to help them to put a C.V. together and even to take them to places should they hear of job possibilities.

 

Kholeka are interested in pallative care.

Tembisa would like another training course in early childhood education.

Vivienne will go for more cooking lessons.

Elsie is undecided.

Nita is now enrolled at a teaching facility for training as level 4 early childhood education.

 

Stacey, the principal at the moment is pregnant (baby is expected in September) and she found another job at Maraisdal Primary School.

 

Staff members that I am keeping are:

Alida to continue doing the  bookkeeping and payments.

Jurie - driver, he is also community worker

Izak - gardener.

 

 

Volunteers:

I have Ellen from Holland and she will be with us for the next two months. She is a medical student and will do a lot of work in the "Plakkerskamp". Hospice needs feet to work with patients there and these are patients with cronic diseases, Hiv and Tuberculosis.

 

 

William:

At the moment he is going through a stage of "anger". Partly because decisions are being made "for him" and also I think he is realising now that he will always be in need of someone to take care of him. He had to deal with a lot of dissapointments. Both carers that I took to Cape Town to take care of him has left him without any prior warning. At the moment his brother is looking after him.

 

Ralph - that build the jungle gym is also here at the moment and he is prepared to put up a storage room for the garden and do the roof and repairs for the containers. 

 

 

Hans - He is the father of Marloes who  was a volunteer at Bonniepeople in 2009. Hans is a computer specialist and he is coming in October from Holland with the  intention to put up a computer room for Bonniepeople. Idea is to put it in where the storeroom is now and also to put in an alarm system. Will let you know more about that later. Very exiting  and I do hope that is something that can be beneficial for the children as well as for the project as a whole

 

Garden - I know that I am an "idealist" but that is what made me start and kept me going. 

Izak has been planting what the people in the community need and if they ask for spinach or cabbage he will just give it to them. No charge. At the moment there is a woman working in the garden from the community. She comes after her day job and helps Izak. I thought she was the wife of Izak but she is not. 

 

It turns out that she takes from the garden vegetables home and she feels that she needs to give something back to the garden.

 

"Dreams can come true"