Cowbridge on Goedgedacht farm (continues)

On Monday all our children and youth returned back to school after their winter school break. We had to find ways to make sure that the Cowbridge students were occupied during the day which was not too difficult if you are on Goedgedacht farm. In fact, we have an inside joke amongst us saying that people who are in need to get some peace and quiet moments they always come to Goedgedacht and find it in a split second, but if we need those moments we have to go off the farm.

The big group of 40 (35 students and 5 teachers) were divided into smaller groups and helped out in the pre-school and baby unit, the olive peace grove and assisted with designing the framework for our latest development…wait for it – a real climate change path on which children, youth and adults can walk and learn about various climate change initiatives on Goedgedacht farm!

In the afternoons the group who helped out in the pre-school and baby unit assisted with the 75 children in our after school programme and others helped out in the olive factory where they are busy with table olives.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Don’t worry, we kept in mind that it was the summer break of the Cowbridge students and have of course ”reluctantly” put in some excursions into their programme. Thanks to Mr. van der Merwe, the very friendly principal of Schoonspruit Secondary School, our visitors got a chance to see where the majority of our Youth in Constructionyouth members go to school. To their suprise they also found Christolene Stuurman, who is one of our bursary students and an active member of our Youth in Construction youth group, doing her practical teacher training for her four year teaching degree. She is currently in her second year and is a real product of our concept of “trying to keep rural children in school for as long as possible”. The dance class of the school performed a lovely dance and for the next few days the conversations amongst the Cowbridge students were about how much better Schoonspruit looked compared to Cowbridge and some even tried to copy some of the dance moves……I won’t go into the details of describing how that turned out! (smile)

 

As I am writing this blog, I am remembering more and more stories….the secret is therefore to keep visiting our blog and make sure that you are the first one to know what’s happening on the farm.

Thanks to all our friends who are visiting this blog and supporting our work, because without you these experiences would not be possible at all. Make sure that you send us your comments because it helps us know that you are with us in our journey to make sure that all rural children have a fair chance to escape the cycles of poverty that have trapped their previous generations for so many years.

Till next time…..cheers!

Cowbridge on Goedgedacht farm

After that warm welcome the Cowbridge students and teachers treated 40 youngsters from our Youth in Construction youth group to their first trip to the ice rink in Cape Town. You can guess what that meant…lots of falling, but great fun! It was a wonderful way to break the ice between the two groups – not literally of course – and it set the tone for the exciting activities that we have up our sleves for them. I could not help but smile very broadly as I watched our youth with their bright green T-shirts (saying….the beginning…at the back) passing by me with such happy faces and so much confidence.

 Thank you Cowbridge for giving our youth the time of their lives! 

Its all happening on the farm….make sure that you visit this blog soon so that you do not miss out on all the exciting activities that the students from Cowbridge experienced on the farm.

Cowbridge arrives at Goedgedacht farm

Lucinda and Megan leading everyone up the hill

After 2 years of fundraising Cowbridge arrives on Goedgedacht farm with 35 students and 5 staff members. They are staying for 1 week. Once everyone had dragged their bags up the hill to their rooms they watched a climate change play that was performed by our own teenagers. In celebration of Madiba’s birthday 107 young people from Wales, Sutton in the UK and our farms joined together for a big sing along. I am sure that Madiba would have cried if he heard everyone singing happy birthday in Welsh, English, Afrikaans and Xhosa last Saturday. After 67 seconds of silence the young people broke out in singing various karoake songs till late night. That set the tone for the exciting activities ahead.

I will keep you updated on what we have on the cards for them every day….watch this space! To check out what students from Cowbridge are saying about the farm, click on the following link:
http://cowbridgeinsouthafrica.blogspot.com

This past week we welcomed EMILY AND MANDY teachers from GLENTHORNE SCHOOL in Sutton in the UK. They brought 4 of their students to visit us on a student exchange. Experts in drama and media, in just three days of rehersals they presented us on Saturday night with a very exciting play on Climate Change, performed by our Tiener Aksie youth group (13-16 year olds). It was a huge task carried out with professionalism and passion and we were thrilled with the result. Thank you Ingrid and Emily for all the work you put into making this trip happen. We believe there are many benefits from these horizontal cultural exchanges between young people.  Fly safely home and thank you all so much for your very special contribution to the Path out of Poverty Programme.

Picture of Ingrid with Emily, Mandy, Ali, Jamie, Cydney and Megan in the Olive groves during the tree dedication ceremony on Satuday.

Jenny Elder has just sold her 600th Olive Tree -  Jenny and her husband Bill, pictured below, have worked tirelessly to support the Path out of Poverty.  Jenny is very knowledgeable about Early Childhood Development she has taken a particular interest in the children in our pre-school and baby unit.  Congratulations on this amazing achievement, we are so very grateful. Every olive tree we plant enables another small child to put his or her foot onto the Path out of Poverty.

Schools visiting us this summer/winter holiday

Hi this is me, Ingrid, wanting to tell you about exciting events happening in the next couple of weeks.

We are gearing up for visits from a number of schools from Wales and England.

Emily Thompson, the drama teacher from Glenthorne Secondary School is coming on her first visit with one other teacher and four students. They will work together with our “Tiener Aksie” youth group on a climate change play which they will perform on Saturday 18thJuly for our older group called  “Youth in Construction” and the next group which arrives from Cowbridge Comprehensive School in Wales that day with 35 student and 5 members of staff.

Cowbridge are going to design and build a “Climate Change Path” across the farm for the week that they are with us. In the evenings they will get together with our older youth for cultural programmes and all kinds of fun. They have also kindly agreed to take our youth members on a trip to the Ice Rink which will be our young people’s first ever experience on ice.  Keep an eye open for the pics and spot the bruises!!!

During this same July period we will have two day visits from school – Austin Friars on the 22nd and the Kings High School Warwick on the 29th.   In August we get a day visit from Duchess County who visited us last in 2004.

Last this year will be a week long second visit in August from 18 students  of King Edward VI, Southampton. They are bringing 100 T-shirts and will teach our children how to tie-dye them. A very exciting period ahead for all of us.

We are very grateful to the staff, pupils and parents of all the schools that have been participating in our campaign to to plant 10 000 olive trees here at Goedgedacht Farm. We have set ourselves the challenge to put another 10 000 children onto the Path out of Poverty from 10 more POP centres in the next 10 years.  So far we have planted 2000 trees so please keep on supporting us – a tree costs R300 which is about twenty five GBP. For more info on how to donate a tree see the goedgedacht website.

keep watching this space…..Ingrid.

my first real blog entry

This is my first blog and I am hoping to get the hang of it in the next couple of days  so that I can tell you more regularly about  the ups and downs of life in a children’s development programme at Goedgedacht farm.

Perhaps for those of you who are not South African I need to explain ’Goedgedacht’.  It’s a an old dutch word meaning “good ideas, good thoughts or well conceived”  very appropriate in a way.  In the UK  our registered charity called “Grow Peace in Africa” just because Goedgedacht is such a difficult to get ones tongue around.  The farm Goedgedacht, the home of the Goedgedacht Trust, dates from 1704 and was one of the first farms allocated to what were called the “Free Burgers”  – they being the Dutch settlers who, having been sent out of by the Dutch East India Company  and having discovered the beauties of the Cape of Good Hope took a serious stand against returning to cold old Holland.

In the past I wrote an occasional story about our work but felt that lots of good stories got lost inbetween writing the articles …so I went to a blogging workshop with Marianna who is bright and beautiful and very sussed when it comes to things digital…and although I was the oldest person there by a long shot I really enjoyed it. Since then I’ve had cold feet …thats about 2 months of cold feet!  Marianna is bugging me to get started. Sean came to help set me up and I’m still very hesitant, but I really want to get going …so here goes.

Although this is called Annie’s stories my colleague Ingrid Lestrade will be an occasional blogger too. She and I have been working together on the Path out of Poverty Programme for the children of farm workers for the last ten and a half years.

I am trying to insert a picture of us taken at our POP (Path out of Poverty) celebrations by the fabulous celebrity photographer Michelly Rall. He, famous as he is, generously spent two days recording our 10th birthday party entirely free of charge as his contribution to our work. You will see – when I finally get the hang of how to put pictures into this blog, that he takes beautiful photographs and certainly made the two of us feel a little bit like celebrities too!!  His proper celebrities include Madonna, R.Kelly, Kirstin Dunst amongst others…so how grand are we!!

POP 10th Anniversary

Dear Friends of Goedgedacht –

CELEBRATION TIME!!!
THE PATH OUT OF POVERTY PROGRAMME IS 10 YEARS OLD.

Have a look at our pictures of the Path out of Poverty 10th anniversary celebration.  It was held on the 31st of January which was also my birthday. The pre-schoolers spelt out my age on the stage and each one gave me a beautiful long stemmed rose. No chance to hide ones age here!!

What a joy the whole event was. Ingrid and her team of POP project leaders worked incredibly hard to plan the day which kicked off with a formal dinner for all our staff on the Friday night to thank them for the support each one has given the POP programme in the past ten years.

Peter, with advice from a range of clever people, Riley Williams a supporter and engineer in Wales, Shirwell Kipps my engineer brother and Tony Smyth retired solicitor now volunteer extraordinary at Goedgedacht , planned and built amphitheatre in just six weeks.

PPC Cement donated more than 200 tonnes of blue rock which had to be broken and put into wire baskets called gabions which formed the steps/seating of the amphitheatre.  We also had a hard working team of gabion fillers led by our relentlessly energetic Jattie Nero who worked in hideously hot weather to get it finished in time for the celebrations. And they made it.  The result is really beautiful and we now have an outdoor space which we know can seat more than 600 people in comfort.

The day dawned with farm workers and their children arriving from as early as 7.00am. Farm owners, friends and representatives of government departments popped in during the day.
The Dept of Sport brought the 2010 Soccer Ambassadors – who brought messages of goodwill, and a wonderful blow up soccer field.

The morning was spent with everyone in the amphitheatre for speeches, thanksgiving and showing off!  The youth demonstrated their skills at ballroom dancing, the “Sweet Voices” sang, Karools Wilskut of our farm manager delivered a very powerful message. Ingrid spoke beautifully about the journey we had all been on for the past ten years.

The magic Mrs. Michaels from Malmesbury catered for 80 of us at the formal dinner on the Friday night and then again for 600 people for breakfast and lunch the following day -making it all look so easy and being thoroughly charming throughout.  We had sports on the field, rugby, soccer and lots of different indigenous games …those ones we all played when we were kids. Huge fun – really wonderful day for all the children and adults who have been part of the programme over the last ten years .

Fig picking …..we now have nearly 5 ha of figs. The more lately planted and more fashionable black ones are due to bare next year but we had a great harvest of good old fashioned totally gorgeous white/green ones this year.  Jeanne our Administrator who has a great flare for marketing suggested we hold an open day in February and invited  the public (not very widely advertised as it was our first attempt) to come and pick their own.  It turned out to be a huge success. Visitors  picked their figs and brought them up to the house for weighing and paying.   Our catering team provided visitors with the option of tea or coffee and plates of home bakes fig jam and cheese scones.  Not many takers for the hot drinks that day, the temperature really defeated us. By ten o’clock the temperature was touching 40 degrees and only the very hardy types were able to stay out in the orchard.  Lovely idea and will definitely be something that we include in our February weekend calendar for next year too. If the harvest is good we will put an invitation on the website. Our thanks to Stephan who designed the beautiful invitation which included recipes on the back.

I just want to report back to you on the projects which you have supported recently …firstly …big drum roll…….

The new POP centre at ESTERHOF/RIEBEEK KASTEEL is on its way. Thanks only to all of you who have contributed to making it happen.

We were lucky to snare our old friend and ‘many time Goedgedacht builder’  Kosie Mouton and his happy team of workers for this very important new project.  Kosie has also said that for the busy patches of the building he will employ ten local people.

At the same time our POP staff and the older youth, fresh from their first big success of enumerating the Elandskloof community in the Cedarberg, are doing house to house surveys as the building emerges from the ground.  It’s a great experience for the youth and is teaching them how to deal with all kinds of people. They proudly told me that of the 169 interviews they did last Saturday only 2 people declined to give their information, but, that they went back after they had finished and both felt able to co-operate!

I must give you a report on a couple of our projects which you have supported recently ….

The Wonder Bag concept was one which really appealed to people especially now that conserving electricity is both an economic and a green issue.One friend said “I’ve never seen those things anywhere except in the kitchens of liberal ladies and they never get used”. I agree entirely. Perhaps there wasn’t the urgency that there is today.  I’ve certainly had one mouldering in a cupboard since the 70s. However, they have now come into their own. Our own very sceptical catering staff have been won over..entirely.  We have four big ones in use in the kitchen all the time now.

Two Saturdays ago Rhoda Kleinsmith Goedgedacht Conference Centre cook did a Wonderbag Workshop for the Safe House Mothers, demonstrating that, not only was it possible to produce a well cooked meal of samp and beans or rice and veg by 6.00pmafter a short cook up of about 5 minutes in the morning before going to work, but that it could also do a whole meat stew!   Each participant went home with a brightly coloured Wonder Bag and pot.

You can see from the pictures that during the workshop the ladies found another use for the wonderbags – a warm and comfy bed for babies.

The Christmas Appeal around  Boxes of Blessings appeal to a lot of our friends who were happy to help bring some joy to the less fortunate over the holidays.

Melissa our community worker spent days before Christmas driving out to farm to deliver Boxes.

Of course handouts of this kind do nothing to solve the problems of real hunger. It’s my view that the children that we care for during the school year – bereft of the daily hot meal that they get at Goedgedacht once school closes and the holiday programme is over, loose ground physically and emotionally during that five week period.  When Edelynne came back to work in January and started to deliver E-pap to families again she found herself stormed by adults and children who were just plain hungry and were desperate for food.

Ingrid and her team are now talking about strategies we could adopt to make sure that the POP children are not left to starve during this long school holiday.

I am sure you will all want to see a picture of Candy in her new school clothes. She is very shy but its quite clear she was very pleased with herself.

Surely nobody would be able to be nasty to her now.

The after-school staff will make sure she keeps it nice and tidy in the future.
Thank you so much, all those of you who have been so generous contributing to our appeal for school uniforms. We now have enough to buy track suits for winter too.  Such a small thing makes such a difference to the children’s motivation for staying in school.

love Annie

Stoep Story January 2009

Dear Friends of Goedgedacht -

Well,  that was a tremendous run up to the end of the year!!

All of us at Goedgedacht Trust send good wishes for a year which will bring lots of challenges for every soul on the planet it would seem.

Here, wishing you a belated happy Christmas is one of our children,  Carmen Beukes,  whose card says it all.
Isn’t she gorgeous.?

Lots to tell –

This past year, keeping in mind our decision to replicate the Path out of Poverty by setting up POP youth centres in 4 other areas, we spread our wings and have successfully completed community enumerations( household surveys) in all four places where we hope to be working in 2009.

Just before Christmas, as part of the holiday programme for our older youth, Ingrid and her POP team took 35 youngsters down to Elandskloof in the Cedarberg to start setting up a youth group there. Here are some lovely pictures of our Tiener Aksie youngsters together with some from the Elandskloof youth going from house to house doing the enumeration of households.

For the past two years we have received the most wonderful gift of shoe boxes filled with gifts for children prepared by the pupils of  Cheltenham College Junior School in England. This year they sent us 200 !!!   Each one beautifully wrapped in colourful paper and labelled.

These are pictures of the children at Elandskloof opening their boxes. These were the only gifts they would have received and it was so exciting to watch their faces. We are so grateful for this very thoughtful and special effort.

Jointly with “Grow Peace in Africa”, Goedgedacht’s UK registered charity,  we ran a week long Summer Camp for younger children between 6 and 13 – The final count was 139 children who had to be kept busy and fed each day.
A huge task for the  older youth who had the opportunity to put their 2008 leadership training into practice and were the team leaders.

It was a terribly hot week with temperatures in the 40s most days. Luckily one of the days had been set aside for raft building on the dam, which was a huge success as you will see from the pictures.

There were lots of end of year Christmas parties – Janet Perrott and her amazing group of  endlessly supportive and generous friends filled nearly 128 colourful bags with presents, each chosen for a specific child. The children were extatic.

A Goedgedacht baby unit.

We have always talked about the need for baby unit but where? … how?
Last year however we were encouraged by our consultant psychotherapist who  felt strongly that we should start providing a service for children below three – because by the time the children come to our crèche they have so many developmental deficits that we just cannot get them school ready in 3 years..

What finally made me take the plunge was a call from the local social worker who said…”either you take little Damon into your school or I am going to remove him”.   He’s the little guy who at 15 months had twice been badly hurt in fights between his parents.  Removing a child has such terrible consequences for rural children, I just couldn’t bear the thought.

At Damon’s farm we already have in place the wonderful Regina running the Safe House. She was prepared to keep an eye on him at night and over weekends, so the challenge for us was, could we find a way to keep him at our pre-school during the day.

That very morning I sat down at my desk and opened an envelope with a pretty card. In it was a cheque for R8000 from Pauline Pryce saying …wait for it ….”I love what you are all doing at Goedgedacht. Please use this for whatever you wish but remember that I love the little ones”. Well!!!!!
What else could I do?  I jumped into the car and went down to Wellington to buy a Wendy House and within a week a 3m x 6m unit had been erected in the yard of the Pre-school.

It was pretty primitive but the story soon got out and Carol Coombes of the Time Out Club approached her husband Brian and to our enormous joy his company Battery Technologies Pty Ltd gave us their generous Christmas donation which has enabled us to clad the inside of the baby unit, put in a ceiling (its very low and very hot) and a floor and equip it with the basics we needed to start.  We are hugely grateful for making it possible for us to take in some babies immediately.

Its just a start but we will go forward slowly, train up two baby carers and see how we go. We aim to have a good mix of very needy children and a few of our staff children just to get a balance.

This is ‘Snoepy’ – he is 2 and has been malnourished since birth. He lives in very chaotic circumstances. At least he is now able to sleep peacefully during the day and will not just have a bottle of tea without milk which is how he arrived with us.

What a blessing.

Thank you all so very,  very much.

2009 looks as if it will be an interesting year so please keep in touch and watch this space for the ups and downs of life on Goedgedacht farm.

love

Annie

Stoep Story October 2008

Dear Friends of Goedgedacht –

Well, its been a proper winter hasn’t it? Real coat weather. I don’t think I’ve needed a coat since the early 60s when I was learning my trade as a social worker in District Six and we wore coats with woolley hats scarves. And has it rained……?!!! A rather religious elderly friend said the other day “ Nee O Here – dis nou net ‘n gemors van water” !! (No dear Lord now this is just a waste of water). Our four dams have been overflowing for at least six weeks and Peter has wept at the ‘waste’ flowing into the river below the farm and on to the sea at Milnerton.

The scenery around us has been magnificent, the farms green and lush with ripening wheat and budding vines and the mountains capped with much more snow than usual. We are so blessed to live and work in such a remarkably beautiful part of the world.

Sadly the winter weather has been really tough on the children living on farms. When Marieta our Health Project Manager told our stalwarts Janet and Jenny that she had found two of our pre-schoolers sleeping on a concrete floor they leaped into action and the result was that we were able to give 100 children a really warm top quality blanket and plus a raincoat. A fabulous effort and our grateful thanks to all their friends who responded so generously.

This year Ingrid has come up with a great idea for a BIG CAMPAIGN to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our Path out of Poverty Programme.

10 000 olive trees planted at Goedgedacht
to put 10 000 children
on the Path out of Poverty
over the next 10 years from
5 POP centres.

This is a picture of Shaquille Arendse and his olive tree – he’s a second generation baby on the Path out of Poverty. His mother Mary Anne was in the first youth group in 1998 and now works in the pre-school project

Ingrid has even challenged the staff at Goedgedacht to plant 1000 trees!! In spite of it being a daunting target of R300 000 the staff are throwing themselves into fundraising events of all different kinds.

Last week the Youth team organised a day where we all had to come dressed in school uniform. It was hilarious. Those who certainly wouldn’t have fitted into their school uniform, like me, had to pay a fine of R50. I did however find a photo of me on my first day at school and pinned it to my jersey.

It was such fun – they made a braai and charged everyone R30 a plate, there was music and dancing throughout the lunch hour and R2000 profit made for the kitty – that’s 6.6 olive trees, 6.6 more children onto the Path!

Our staff at play – fundraising for olive trees! We have set aside Saturday 31st of January 2009 as the day on which we will celebrate POP’s 10th anniversary, with all the children who have been part of the programme over the past ten years, their parents, the farm worker community and our staff.

News Flashes.

Dawie, Marlon, Marius and Dora are hard at work trying to turn our Bicycle Empowerment Project at Esterhof into a successful small business. With the price of taxi’s rocketing and petrol sky high there is much enthusiasm in the community for owning a bike.

Last Saturday I once again had reason to bless the young people in our youth group who laboured long and hard over weekends for almost a year to set up Safe Houses on 8 of the farms in this area.

Regina, one of the Safe House Mothers phoned at night to tell Marieta (our nurse) that a fifteen month old baby had been hurt in a fight between his drunk parents. This was the second time this little boy had received a black eye. Regina was amazing, she took him into her home – the Safe House, called the police to remove the father and organised to take Mother and baby to see the social workers in Malmesbury on Monday. See why we feel blessed …what would have happened if she hadn’t been there?

Marieta and Karen our head Carer are running what they call “werf vergaderings “ (yard meetings) on the farms where there are Safe Houses. These meetings bring the farm worker community together to enjoy a pot of delicious curry and rice while giving them a chance to talk about problems and as of last week, play games. Marieta has invented her own special “snakes and ladders” game where the ups and the down prompts are around the problems of drinking and abusive behaviour. The game is a HUGE success. I think we’d better think about a patent.

And the saddest newsflash of all ….The Valley Eagles Rugby Team got into the finals of the Zone and lost 22-18 to Young Tigers. They played their hearts and we are so proud of them.
The valiant Valley Eagles.

Love Annie