Sep - Dec 2011

Good morning everybody,

As Heidi just said, I will write the blog today. I will write another blog about my work and here I will tell you about the last two/three months at the project.

A lot of things have changed this year when I compare it to last year. Because of the strict government rules, it is more difficult to do what we want to do. But luckily there is so nice help at the project that I see a bright future for the project.

To begin with Ellen en Tina, the volunteers of the previous blog. They helped out a lot. They worked hard to make the classrooms look better. They painted the rooms in bright colours and they made it look very attractive for the children, with nice pictures and drawings. Thank you so much girls!

Then we have Lee, she is a real gift for the project! She is since September the principle of the project. Lee has a very good feeling for the children, the staff and the plakkerskamp. She helps the teachers with their lessons. Every day she makes a program, so the teachers know what to do.
She works hard to get the parents more involved. And believe me, that is not an easy job. Everything is so good organized now. People come now to the project to sign their children in for next year.

Ralph finished the containers in the back of the project. It looks very nice. Next year we will work here with the older children. Pictures will come!

My father Hans came here in November, to start up a computer room. He bought two laptops and a printer. He installed everything and he helped Jason to work on the computer. We are very happy that my father did this, because now we can teach the kids computer skills. Educational programs are a bit too expensive, so we have to look for some nice affordable educational games. Thank you again dad for this great project! He also wrote a blog: https://sites.google.com/site/bonniepeoplezuidafrika2011/

In October Aly and Francis from Luxemburg visited the project. They worked hard to organize things for the project. They had a lot of meetings and they made some nice decisions. Soon you will hear about these new plans! I am very excited.

For next year, we want to get the whole community more involved. We would like to do this by activities for young and old. For example: Ladies who like to do needlework can make things together at the project. Maybe they can make things to sell. Important is that the people feel welcome at the project and that they have a good time. Drinking tea, music on the background, talking with each other, etc.
We made some very nice contacts with other community projects in this area. We are very open to work together and help each other, so we can be stronger.  

In January we will start a new year, with new ideas and new youngsters and children. There will be volunteers in January and we are very thankful for that!

                                               Children learning to eat with knife and fork