Education Programmes for Kids &Teachers, Cape Town

A big thank you for supporting ORT SA CAPE's food and education programmes in South Africa, through our page on GlobalGiving.

In March, GlobalGiving held its Little by Little challenge, and bonus funding was available. We are so grateful to each person who supported the children helped by ORT SA CAPE during this challenge! In total, CHW's supporters gave £1012.21 and we received £267.24 in bonus funds too! This was such a big help for this project!

Bev from ORT SA CAPE has given the following update:

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2020 was most definitely a challenging year, one which highlighted so many inequalities that ORT SA CAPE has endeavored to address. We continue with our food relief initiative that was started in April 2020. This has proved to be a lifeline for many families who continue to feel the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic. Since January 2021, we have increased the size of the food parcels and are therefore distributing monthly and not bi-monthly. We are now supporting over 150 families every month.

This initiative will continue for as long as funding allows and we are most grateful to Children's Helpers Worldwide for their on-going support of our food relief initiative.

Dawn, a Project Manager at ORT SA CAPE, who is involved with the food programme said:

"...it makes you realize, that there is a greater reason why ORT SA CAPE is doing what they are doing, what an amazing foundation that does so much and it does not go unnoticed!! Many of the recipients told us that they share their food with more people in their family circle or with neighbors; I think that is simply awesome, realizing our people shows kindness when even they themselves are struggling."

The LEGO parent initiative continues to be a valuable resource for families of young children and to date we have donated over 18000 sets of LEGO Six Bricks to families in under resourced communities. This resource encourages ''learning through play'' and interaction between parents and their children.

With the slight easing of lockdown restrictions in South Africa on 15 February, we have been able to return to limited face to face training. We managed to present a LEGO Playbox training to a group of 12 ECD [Early Childhood Development] teachers at the end of February (pictured below).

However, the majority of our training continues to be on-line. In March we presented on-line LEGO training to over 120 teachers. LEGO resources were delivered to these teachers prior to the training sessions, which took place via Zoom (Our facilitators, Jade and Karen are pictured below presenting the on-line LEGO training).

We continue to allocate the generous donations from CHW to both our food relief and LEGO training initiatives. As well as giving food parcels to families ORT SA CAPE also helps creches and other centres. Kensington creche is one such beneficiary.

Kensington creche caters for low income families and is subsidized through fund raising and partnerships with organisations like ORT SA CAPE. They had to close down for most of 2020 due to families being unable to pay fees and have since re-opened with the help of their supporters.

The team at the creche wrote:

"We thank you most sincerely for your very generous donation of assorted groceries and vegetables... The Educare Centre is open every weekday from 07h00 which allows parents to work a full day knowing that their children are cared for and educated in a safe and nurturing environment.

With your donation, we are able to provide the pupils with daily nutritious meals. Our teachers are committed, caring and make every effort to provide the best for each pupil, especially under these very trying and difficult times. We are most grateful for the donation and appreciate your support."

Ria was a past student of ORT SA CAPE's ECD [Early Childhood Development] training. She unfortunately passed away from Covid complications in 2020. At the time of her death she was running a soup kitchen, Noluthu's Kitchen for over 200 children. We are honoured to be able to continue her dream by supporting the kitchen with food parcels every month. Her husband, called Honest, expressed his gratitude for the donation of the food parcels for the children, who were very close to Ria's heart.
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Thank you again, so much, for deciding to make a difference for the children in Cape Town!

Thank you so much for supporting ORT SA CAPE's programmes, and especially for your continued help during this very challenging year. ORT SA CAPE has been able to adapt the way it delivered its education programmes since the lockdown began. It also started a food programme, as the increased levels of poverty meant there was a greater need for help with food. We are so grateful to each person who has supported these projects, through CHW's page on GlobalGiving.

Bev from ORT SA CAPE has shared the following report and photos:

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"The pandemic has highlighted so many inequalities and ORT SA CAPE endeavored to address these challenges by implementing a food relief initiative to our most vulnerable beneficiaries as well as distributing LEGO educational resources to parents and caregivers during school closures. The food relief initiative provides a lifeline and return of dignity to the families we support.