The 2017 cohort of South African matriculants have finished writing their final school exams and are taking a well-deserved rest, before they head out into the world in January to study or work.
As they head into the holidays we want to remind them that they have the power to create change.
Together with SACAP (The South African College of Applied Psychology), Good Things Guy’s Brent Lindeque continues the ‘You have the power to create change’ journey to show young South Africans that they have great value to offer the country.
For the next few months Brent and a group of young South Africans are embarking on road tripa to create change, popping in at a variety of charity and school programmes to lend a hand. They have visited Cape Town and Johannesburg and will still be going to Pretoria, creating change in big and small ways, challenging other young South Africans to actively get involved in their communities.
This month’s trip kicks off very early on a crisp Cape Town morning. Together with SACAP student Thozama Nobhongoza, Brent pops in at the Good Hope Seminary School’s Breakfast Club to help serve breakfast to all the learners. From there he puton his ‘Cat in the Hat’ hat and him and Thozama read to the Grade 2 learners and visit the Good Hope Seminary Shine Centre. They end their day working in the Urban Harvest food garden at Mary Khine Primary School.
The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club run by the Good Start Trust at Good Hope Seminary Junior School, provides breakfast to the whole school, serving 420 bowls of ePap every morning.
Learners from Grades R to 7, travel into the city from as far as Khayelitsha, Delft or even Hout Bay. Some get up as early as 4am, to catch transport at 5am. They may not have eaten or had anything to drink before leaving home. Their journey to school may take 11⁄2 hours. This means they are hungry by 8am, when they start lessons. And hungry children cannot learn effective. Realising this need, in Feb 2016, a team led by Aletta Ashmore (Learning Support Educator) and Patsy Bagraim (Shine Volunteer) started to feed E’Pap and fruit breakfasts to 75 Grade 1’s. As funding came in, they rolled the programme out to Grade R, then to one class after the other. Now the whole school is offered breakfast. This means that 420 Learners are fed each school morning.
Shine Literacy
Shine Literacy is a non-profit organisation that seeks to create a culture of reading in South African schools, homes, workplaces and communities, thereby improving literacy outcomes for young children from low-income communities.In South Africa, 29% of Grade Four children are illiterate and 58% cannot read for meaning (Spaull, 2016).
Shine Centres (such as the one a Good Hope Seminary School) and Chapters provide individualised support to children in Grades Two and Three (the Literacy Hour) to strengthen their reading, writing and speaking skills. Children work with trained volunteers once or twice a week, during the school day, for at least one year. In 2017, we have six Shine Centres (supporting seven schools) and 19 Shine Chapters, together directly benefitting over 1400 children each year in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Urban Harvest Food Garden at Mary Kihn
The school vegetable garden at Mary Kihn was created by Urban Harvest, a social enterprise specialising in organic food garden services for community projects and home.
It has three purposes: first, to provide fresh, organic produce to the school kitchen which feeds each child two healthy meals a day. Second, to introduce the children to new foods and show them where their food comes from – how a tomato grows, what a pea looks like in its shell on the bush and what a strawberry plant looks like. Finally, the garden is an outdoor classroom. The children have the opportunity to plant seeds, watch them grow, and harvest their own produce. They learn how worms break down organic matter and turn it into thick, black soil, and they have a place to observe natural processes and connect with the earth.
As South Africa’s first edible garden service Urban Harvest have installed and maintained over 330 gardens to date and focus on developing a triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Through their community projects people gain skills and employment and thousands are eating fresh and healthy vegetables everyday.
Join us on our Cape Town “YOU have the power to create change” roadtrip.
In January we head off to Pretoria …. expect a #SACAPCreateChange mash-up.
And if you are a matriculant who believes they have the power to create change and is interested in the field of psychology and counselling, SACAP offers a wide range of qualifications including (Higher Certificate, Diploma, BAppSocSci, Bpsych, BPsych Equivalent and BsocSci Honours) and a one-of-a-kind approach to learning: academic rigour and applied skills. Graduating confident “work ready” practitioners is key, which is why SACAP combines an academically rigorous curriculum with a strong emphasis on the ability to apply knowledge through the training of relevant skills.
Registration for 2018 term one, closes at the end of January 2018. For further information, visit: www.sacap.edu.za
by 