Supporting Education for NOAH Orphans

From the implementation of the "Supporting Education for Noah Orphans project", many children have been able to benefit through this initiative.  The Global Giving Project Portal has assisted organisations like Noah  to receive  donations from donors all over the world. As one of these organisations, we greatly appreciate the unconditional support.

Over the years, Noah has been able to assist more than 20,000 orphaned and children from 100 disadvantaged communities. Boys and girls from all walks of life have received assistance in educating themselves to become better citizens of tomorrow. Many children have through this project achieved great academic results at school because  they have been tutored and assisted in their homework during their aftercare activities at the ark. These children feel empowered,and ready to achieve anything they set out to do in life.

Noah's mission is to empower the communities with the  knowledge, skills,strategies and self confidence to form and successfully operate their own community based organisations supporting the wellbeing of children. According to Maslow's hierachy of needs, education is the most sought after need because with the knowledge acquired, a person can achieve anything they set out to do.

With continued assistance in this regard, many children of South Africa will be great citizens starting from the grassroots!

I visited two of Noah’s Arcs in South Africa a little more than a week ago.  The first one, called Kliptown, was located in the Soweto township where a lot of the news-making Apartheid-related tragedies took place.  The Arc is run by a woman named Helen, a member of the Soweto community who has been managing the Arc for several years.  She took care in showing me around the plot of land whose perimeter was outlined on all four sides by portals (long, narrow, mobile rooms outfitted with all the fixings to create classroom space, a kitchen and bakery, and bathrooms for the children to use).  In the middle of these portals was an open play space for kids to have lunch and otherwise enjoy the outdoors.  There was also a small garden kept on the land that was used to prepare food for the children and to sell produce and baked goods to the surrounding community. 

NOAH encourages Arc managers to develop income-generating projects that will help them raise money to support themselves.  In fact, this is a big piece of the NOAH model.  Arcs are managed by people in the community, who receive training on a variety of topics including general business operations, subject matter for the kids to learn, and how to raise money to eventually be self-sustaining.  The other Arc I visited rents part of its space to a local church to use for community gatherings.  There are 101 Arcs across South Africa, and NOAH’s annual budget is 300 million Rand (roughly $45M US dollars).

It was wonderful to see how much real interaction and engagement there was with the kids, with an emphasis on general learning, nutrition, and awareness.  One of the instructors I observed was teaching the children a song, “My Body Belongs to Me”.  The lyrics of the song were repetitive and helped make the children aware of the need to protect their bodies and their health.  I did not have the opportunity to observe students coming to the Arcs after school, but learned from Helen and her colleague Mimi, who runs the Arc called Freedom Park, that their facilities are available for day care and after care support to children all the way into their late teens.  I also learned that the Arc managers meet regularly to share stories, best practices, and otherwise build each other up so they can collectively be supporting their communities in effective and sustainable ways.