Sebaka sa Kgolo Center of Growth

From the joy in these faces we feel our Resource Center is a success and we are just as happy as the kids!

2011-09-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

Some of our Community Projects include: (first 4 pictures below) Linking with Parys Rotary Club to fit more than 100 pair of shoes to local school children. Sebaka sa Kgolo Center of Growth also delivered more than 100 000 Rand of milk donated by WYNN-WITH DAIRY to local creches some of which are listed below.

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Kids don't realize but they are developing their spatial, visual, reasoning, and motor skills as they play with the building blocks.

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Kids are proud of their work

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Tomorrow's leaders in the world of big business, Engineering, community activities, and teachers.

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More sound science fun! The painted tubes demonstrate sound pitch, while tubes in the background (second picture below) demonstrate the speed of sound.

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Sounds of Science through music.

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We found space for one more on the way back to the school, for a total of 24 of 25 students. We need better transportation!

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First day of class and the bus pulls up with 23 students in it for class

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Nelly is our office manager and also incharge of our Vredefort Newsletter

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This is Shadrack or Tefo, he also helps daily. Tefo is a 21 year old orphan who was refered to us for schooling. We got him enrolled in an adult program and he has been helping us for food. We call him loaf and a half because he eats so much.

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Another of our Staff: Magdelina is our teacher, and as you can see, she is not afraid to get her hands dirty.

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Three of our seven regular crew. From right Billy, Receive, and William

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Learner shows the director how he writes a letter "A"

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Center Director reads a story in English and the Center Teacher translates the story immediatly to their mother tongue of Sostho.

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Alec Lynn, a youth advisor and college student, from Ionia, Michigan visited our Center for 2 weeks and helped us a lot. He told me he loved his job because it was always a joy to work with the kids. As you can see he was a hit with the Kids.

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Kids love to pretend

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A real sponsor in a pretend world. Wynn-With Dairy has shown great human compation and have donated more than R100 000 of milk for us to distribute to local creches.

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Kids love to build and play with the blocks we made and the donated pop cycle sticks

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Resources donated by the Hausserman Family of Ionia, Michigan and transported by Delta Airlines and Hastings Rotary Club

2011-09-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Door to door Survey

2010-10-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

This door to door survey was conducted by a core group of approximately 35 unemployed volunteers under the age of 30 who want to make a change in their community. The only perk these volunteers received for their work was food donated by Vreestate Caring Action, a women's group of Vredefort.

This survey started as a means to get the word to people who didn't have ID's and Birth Certificates that would allow them to collect retirement pay and money from the government for children who were entitled. To this basic survey we added questions about type of housing they had; how many people lived in the home; how many were employed; how many could read and write; how many were on a pension; and the source from where they received income. Thus far the group has visited 1114 homes in Mokwallo with the following results:
RDP or like housing 722 , Makuku (temporary tin shacks) 459, # People surveyed 4737, # Have ID 2640, Birth Certificate 1813, Adults Employed 473, # Have Matric (high school diploma) 621, # receiving Pension 575, # Read 2422, # Write 2411 sources of income were anything from domestic, gardener, farm worker, mine worker, employed by Sasol, local business, abitoir, truck driver, police, or municipality. Many did not answer the question and some questions were answered with dashes, checks or crosses; thus, there can be many holes in the survey.

We knew going into the survey that unemployment would be high, but were astounded to find the unemployment rate of 90%.

We feel that this survey serves as a pilot study showing our community is in dire shape and much assistance is needed. We further suggest that this assistance must not be a gift. We must not give them the fish, we must teach them to fish. We also feel that the survey must be refined and our survey takers given better instruction on how to fill in the results that we need to make the next one more accurate. Overall we feel this survey would work as a true gage for our communities growth or change because of our project.

Our Group with their new T-Shirts sponsored by Rotary Parys and Wimpy of Parys

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Our Group doing a door to door survey gathering important information

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Two people working together interviewing residents of Mokwallo

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Group receiving instructions before beginning

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Creche Teachers we work with from Vredefort

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Food and service at the venue were terrific, friendly and attentive

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Experienced secondary science teacher, Ina Van Zyl, gave a non-stop performance at the Mpumalanga workshop. She filled in at the last minute and did a fantastic job as other presenters had to back out at the last minute!

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Samuel and Seiso listening intently while Ina makes a point

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Ina adding a few drops of milk to a glass of clear water

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One of Ina's demonstrations as she shine a light through the glass onto the paper behind the glass to demonstrate how the milk in the glass changes the light

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Ina's shows what happened during the demonstration

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Stanley, Pius, Lerato and Zeph on a lighter moment

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Samuel making a valuable contribution

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Stanley and Lerato listen as Pius makes a comment

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Zeph, Shsba, Samuel listen closely

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Ina making one of many points

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From Left: Piet, Doctor, Sipho, and Jerry

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Ina making a point

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Group Picture of Mpumalanga Provience Subject Advisors

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Freestate workshop

2010-01-17T23:33:00.000-08:00

The Freestate SAIP Workshop was certainly well thought out and sent Subject Advisers away with many things to think about. They also had plenty of useful information to take with them. The workshop opened at about 1 PM with a finger lunch and went on a tour of the physics labs. The remainder of the day was spent discussing issues around education and what the university wanted from the incoming students and the subject advisors also got to tell what they expected from the university. At 5:30 we ended the session and headed for the Boyden Science Center and Observatory where we toured the facility and had a great braai.

Friday morning started off with specific topics that subject advisers requested be discussed. Work, power and energy was done by Matie Hoffman; Electrodynamics with supporting theory on Electromagnetism (Ted Kroon); Electrostatics including Capacitors & Capacitances (Koos Terblans).

Subject advisers in the workshops I have been involved with have been very interested and have participated well by asking questions and getting involved with what is going on. The formal idea behind the workshops is to not only present information that the Subject Advisers can return to their district and assist teachers with, but also to form a relationship between the Universities and the Subject advisers and hopeful this will later also include the teachers.

From What I have witnessed, the workshops have been successful!

Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Freestate workshop

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Not everything is coming up roses, but dasies are pretty too and things are fresh for the new School year.

2010-01-13T03:11:00.000-08:00

This is the head of the school governing body (head of the school board) and one of those who approved our plan to use the school for our project.

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These guys went from sweeping classrooms to sweeping the stairs.

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These guys were busy waxing the floors.

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This is a multi-stage process with the mop closely following the broom.

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These guys had the dust flying.

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There were also volunteers helping with the cleanup

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It is not all hard work as these girls pose for a picture.

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Note the broom of choice here. It is hard to imagine anyone back home using it.

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This is a huge dust pan and if you look closely it is full

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Girls replacing furniture

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Many students were posing for pictures, but this girl was too busy working.

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Girls Moving a desk

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Even though there is darkness in the near view, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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Gardner removing weeds

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Busy Bees

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Start of the 2010 School Year

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Tuesday January 12, the day before the start of school for the year 2010 and students were busy cleaning their classrooms. Teachers divided the learners by class from grade 8 through grade 12 and the students cleaned their own classrooms. They first hauled out all the desks and chairs, then swept and scrubbed floors, cleaned windows inside and out; waxed floors, and replaced the desks and chairs. Students also collected their text books and then went home for lunch.

SAIP Workshop in Port Elizabeth: This was a great group of people, who got involved and participated as well as any group we had. They found every Physics mistake we made and are a group the Province should be proud of! I hope they learned half as much from us as we did from them!

2010-01-11T03:11:00.000-08:00

This is board member Hettie Rademan

2009-12-15T03:21:00.000-08:00

Hettie is one of our group who would like to teach the business of catering to the people. She has run a very successful business for about 40 years and had catered for groups as large as 1500 people and remains as cool as a cucumber.

Meeting

2009-12-15T03:18:00.000-08:00

This is part of the group of nearly 50 people that showed up for our meeting on a two hour notice. Of this group of roughly 50 people we got a list of 32 project volunteers.

Thabo one of our members.

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Thabo is one of our first members, who currently teaches math telling some of the people about the project.

Some Painters

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These guys painted a room that we held a meeting in just minutes after we took this picture.

Crew at Lunch

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More Help

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Piet in the foreground and Smyanga with his back to us. Piet is a painter and repariman, Smanga is a fourth year law student at Wits University.

Board member Johannes helping out.

2009-12-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

Johannes is an old and trusted friend who lives near a cemetary in the township. To me, he is the spirit of our project. When we first asked him to serve on our board, he was invited to a meeting on a Saturday morning. He told my wife Aletta: "... every Saturday morning I hear all the funerals go by my house and this Saturday I woke up to do something to help my community." And at about 72 he is in there working hard. How is that for spirit?

Our Mascot Magster

2009-12-15T03:03:00.000-08:00

A Week Later

2009-12-15T02:44:00.000-08:00

Today about a week has gone by since I first turned the cleaning ladies loose on the building. In that time they have cleaned all the rooms that we currently have access to, we have replaced the door locks, and we have painted at least 5 rooms. Now come the serious money items and I have to put my wallet back in my pocket and pursue serious funding for a year of operation. Please keep an eye on us and see if we can do it.

2009-12-15T02:14:00.000-08:00

This is a view of the area (currently unused sports grounds) beyond that are some of the houses of Mokwallo. Our project is near their home because the most common mode of transportation here is by foot.

Hallway

2009-12-15T02:11:00.000-08:00

This is a hallway to the rooms we have been given to use. As you can see, we have a lot of space that we will put to good use. We plan to start with a project to mentor teachers. This requires time from the teachers, the program has been used successfully in China and we hope it will also be successful in Vredefort.

This is an example of what the ladies doing the cleaning started with

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And they have done wonders. They have also been followed by three men who have volunteered to paint and have done a great job.

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More damage from the wire theft.

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Some of the electrical materials taken from the school

Way UP

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This is a covered walkway that hungry people have used to get into the school rooms to strip valuable electric wires to turn in at salvage yards for cash. We must fence this area off to keep them out.

Volunteers

2009-12-15T01:29:00.001-08:00

These are two of our volunteers working to clean the classroom

Volunteer Cleaning Ladies

2009-12-15T01:26:00.000-08:00

Without prior notice these ladies were rounded up and cleaning within 10 minutes of my contacting them.

Lift Off

2009-12-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

I have been in South Africa for nearly five years. Much of that time has been spent working with my wife Aletta researching South African Education. Aletta has a PhD in Science education with a background in Physics. On the other hand I seem only to be armed with an ability to see things that people in the field of education overlook and the nerve to ask questions that will sometimes stop them in their tracks. So I guess you could say that I am a 61 year old student of science, who is not afraid to be heard and make his point know. I feel it is fair to say that I have been learning and working in the field for the last 10 years. My latest project has been organizing a nationwide set of workshops for Department of Education physics subject advisers for the South African Institute of Physics a project sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology.

After compiling the research that we have done at different levels of education around the country one question from a head master had haunted me: “And what are you going to do with this research?" I felt it was a great question, but then he was a student of my wife's from years back and had been trained well.

So we started a section 21 company (non-profit) based on what we had learned and designed to support teachers. For the last several years I have been developing a plan and trying to get a deserted building from the municipality to house a resource center for a community project to support local teachers, learners and the community itself. But all my efforts produced nothing in the form of a building to house our resource center.

Two weeks ago I was taking a birthday cake to a friend at Boiphehelo (pronounced Beplelo) high school and ran into a familiar face from SS Paki, a new high school here in town. Elias was the name behind the face and he was the new head master at Boiphehelo high school. We got talking and he explained that he was taking over a school that had in many ways been neglected and the reputation of the school for pass rate was not too good. Therefore, his student population had dropped and he felt he had a lot to change to get the grades back up.

Soon Elias asked about the project I had been working on to support the schools. I explained my building problems with the municipality and the next thing I knew, Elias was suggesting that he had some extra space available in the school that was being vandalized and suggested that he would run it by his school governing body the next day and if they approved we could have one entire floor of the currently unused building. On the following Monday he called me with the good news that the body had given its approval and we were in business. I was so happy I could have kissed the man! My mind was going a hundred miles an hour as I was going from room to room and checking out the space in my own little world.

We will not be charged rent, but are expected to help out with the water and electricity bills. We must come up with money for building repairs that are really minor, door knobs with lock sets, replace about 8 toilets that are in poor repair, fix a few ceiling panels, add a little insulation and paint. We must also provide security for the building which we figure will include about 20 000 Rand worth of security fencing, an alarm system still to be estimated and we must replace some electric wiring that has been stolen. But all in all it will be much more building for far less money than what we expected to spend on the other building. It should be a win-win-win situation for us, the schools, and the community.

On Friday morning about 10 A.M., I stopped to see a woman I know about people to help clean the school, literally in minutes we had three more women in my car complete with supplies and we were headed to the school to clean the rooms. By 3 P.M. they had 5 rooms cleaned. They still need to clean the windows in those rooms and put down some floor wax, but they will be back on Monday to do more work, hopefully we will have the rooms cleaned next week.

This could only happen in South Africa, or maybe in a state of emergency somewhere else. But then maybe that is what education is here - a state of emergency.