Lifeskills for 8 children in South Africa - Pilot

Good morning, Avuxeni!

I hope you are well, we are all doing fine here in not so sunny Limpopo. The rainy season started 3months late and we have had weeks of no sun and plenty of rain. So much so that items of clothing are starting to smell miffy and mould/mildew is appearing on leather goods, apart from that we are doing well.

Today I wanted to share a story from our one of our parents who attended Journey of Life training with feedback from her son Katlego who is one of our scouts. The synergy is wonderful and the impact is really bringing families together with healing.

In fact, at one training, we had great granny, granny, mother and daughter all in the same training. After the training great granny stood up and in front of all the participants apologized for the harm she had caused her family in the way she harshly treated her daughter. Then granny stood and apologized to her daughter, then the mother stood and apologized to her daughter! Four generations had abuse perpetrated down the family line as normal. On this day tears of repentance were flowing and real healing was experienced. Huge changes happened within the family.

Anyway I got distracted, here is Patience’s story, I hope you enjoy the story below.

Blessings

Louise

My name is Patience, and I am married to a handsome man from Shiluvana. We have four children: two boys and two girls. My firstborn was born in 1998, my second child in 2005, my third in 2011, and my youngest in 2018. My firstborn has completed matriculation and is currently trying to further his studies.

I live with my husband and three of our children (one boy and two girls). All of our children participated in the Scouts program, from the oldest to the youngest. Before going to scouts the children would not listen to me, they would go out late at night, they would play away from the house, even when I spoke to them, they would ignore me. They wouldn’t do their chores or help in the house in any way.

Raising the children in Scouts was very easy, my children were very disciplined and easy to parent, they are not difficult children. The children have a focus in life, my youngest girl wants to study, get a good job, she doesn’t want to have a child or be dependent on her parents, she is focused and determined. My eldest son was moulded by scouts, he now has a job in Letsitele, he is independent and working hard for his future. He is not distracted by alcohol or anything else negative.

Katlego also as 17yrs does not want to even try to smoking or drinking because being in scouts is helping him focus on his future that he wants for himself. Drinking and smoking would interfere in his future plans. I am very happy with the Scouts Program.

I was invited to the JOL training because my children are involved in Scouts, and this training has been very helpful for me. I used to be a strict parent who didn’t believe in talking to or listening to children, thinking they would take advantage of it. However, I have changed significantly since attending the training. I can now laugh with my children and communicate with them, which has improved our relationship.

My youngest child is a girl who craves attention. In the past, I wouldn't give her much attention and often sent her to her sister. Now I realize that she wanted to spend time with her mother. Now I let my children be a part of decision making in the household, before the training I didn’t, they are really taking on more responsibilities in the home without being asked and are participating in running the home, sharing their problems with me and listening at a new level.

Voice of the chid

My name is Katlego, I am 17 years old. I joined the scout’s program when I was 13 years old. Initially I joined the scout’s program because most of my friends were in scouts and I wanted find out what they were doing that was keeping them going every Friday. I felt a sense of belonging and had friends who seemed like family to me. I live with my parents and 2 siblings hence I encouraged my siblings to join the scout’s program also.

My mother had the opportunity to be part of the parents who attended the Journey of life training and after the first day of training she was a different person towards me, when I got back home from school, she welcomed me with a smile that I had never seen from her. I felt so confused but also happy to see that smile from her, that made my day. She proceeded to ask me how my day was and again she had never done that before. I felt like I had a new mother whom I really liked.

Before whenever I did something to upset her, she would shout at me, and I would just lock myself in my room and was not able to apologise because I was hurt from how she was talking to me. My relationship with my mother has improved, now when I’ve done something to upset her, she sits me down and we talk about it. I can apologize and no longer go to my bedroom. I am always happy when I go home from school because I know I am going to be welcomed with her beautiful smile.

I am now allowed to go shopping to buy my own clothes, which I couldn’t before. My mum is giving me more freedom in my choices, but I am not sure how long it will last. I am still not completely confident in the changes I see, I love my mum but she was very strict as a parent, it will take some time for me to trust the changes but she is much easier to talk to.

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I am so excited to share my update this week!

For those of you who like graphs and want to understand the impact we are having on the communities we serve, the families we work with and children we train, I have been compiling an annual report for our institutional donor KNH. I want to share visually what is happening since we started this project in 2023.

We have been focussing on Child Participation at family, school and community level. As part of children’s rights, children need to have a voice at these different levels. In 2022 we performed a CRSA (Children’s Rights Situational Analysis) which is basically we looked at whether the children were enjoying their rights at family, school and community levels and why not. We developed a 5yr plan from the information we gathered and have been implementing the plan since then.

We have identified 18 different Key Indicators and had the participants (parents, children, Induna’s and Teachers) rank the indicators out of a score of 4 overall with different levels indicating the change we were affecting.

From the CRSA in blue you can see very little participation was happening at any level. In 2023 we did a baseline collection of data before starting the project and as you can see we had already started impacting families particularly and some Induna’s through the Journey of Life training we have been doing consistently over the years.

In 2024, despite trying to mobilize the teachers it was very difficult to engage with them and bring them on board. So children were not engaged at all despite their constitutional right to participate at Learner Representative Councils (LRCs) meetings or at School Governing Board (SGBs) meetings. However, in the home and in the communities, the children are starting to participate actively.

Although it reads 2025 in yellow on the graph, our contract with our partners KNH finishes at the end of February every year so this is from 1^st March 2024 to 28^th February 2025. You can see that parents are far more likely to ask their children for their input on different issues. Teachers have now started to engage with children. LRCs are not at every school and child representation is not at every SGB but there is a willingness to start.

Induna’s despite their absolute refusal to engage with children, citing a lack of capacity, after training and reflection and KTD196 challenging those ideas, many of the trained Induna’s are holding Junior Community Meetings with the children and reporting back to the adults at the Community Level what they have discovered and how best to address the children’s concerns especially regarding safety and security.

This program will run till 2028, as we continue to bring about cultural change and inclusion, parents are starting to realize that what the children have to say is valid, and worth listening to, but also it is creating a cohesion effect and bringing families together.

Its too early to see the impact in the school but discipline is always cited by teachers as lacking, the students cite corporal punishment and the lack of respect for teachers as an issue. By bringing the two groups together equally, we are hoping to address both issues.

As all 3 spheres of the project develop, we are hoping to increase the social capital children hold, to ensure their rights as rights bearers and assist duty bearers to do their jobs as tasked by the South African Constitution. We want to make our communities safer for the children. It’s a huge undertaking but as you can see, we are the journey.

Thank you for making this happen. Our current donor only supplies a portion of the funds needed to run this project, that is where you are so vital. Thank you for your support, I hope you enjoyed this report, please leave a message on our website if you have any questions. The link is below.

Louise

Links:

• Please drop us a line or if you have any questions!
• Facebook is a great way to keep up to date with what we are upto
• Why not visit our website and keep up to date?

• Spider Graph for Key Performance Indicators (PDF)