I'm still here!

Well after a day at the coast and catching up with an old friend. I travelled up to Greytown yesterday (Sunday) which is about 70 kilometres from Pietermaritzburg. I stayed with Jenny and Keith who laid on a great dinner for me and a bed for me to sleep in. Jenny and Keith are friends of the Morrison Family up in Dingwall.  Sometimes the more I speak to people, the more I realise we live in a small world. Jenny organised for me to visit two projects today (Monday) ‘LETCEE’ and a ‘Out Reach Charity connected to Shalom Church’.

LETCEE was an ECD (early child development) project. I have one word which sums up this project – AMAZING. I'm terrible with names but the founder/director, Mary and her staff are doing amazing work against tough circumstances. They train pre-school teachers and this year alone 350 women will leave LETCEE with an accredited diploma in pre-school education. They also run out-reach programmes; which centre on ECD in rural areas where children can not access pre-schools as easily as others nearer larger villages or towns. Whatever I write will not give LETCEE the credit it deserves. The women at the training facility all make their own equipment which will be used by them when they graduate and start working in pre-schools. All the equipment is made from recycled rubbish which items include a desk and chair which is strong enough for an adult to sit on.

This is a chair, which is made from old cereal packets and loo rolls.

This is one of the outreach pre-schools. They gather materilas from toy libraries.

I then moved on to visit the project connected to Shalom Church. Lauren a young woman, a qualified nurse, is embarking on developing a new system of distribution of ARV’s, ARV compliance and also testing for HIV. It’s an interesting concept & if she is able to make it work, she will be able to save hundreds of lives. I wish her all the luck and I hope to be kept informed of her progress.

Since arriving two weeks ago there seems to me there is a new emphasis on community participation in projects. In other words the community is consulted on projects which organisations they wants to implement in their communities. Interestingly at first this project struggled but with the community participating the success rate is outstanding and far more productive. There has been, and unfortunately continues to be, a mentality of "we know best". As such projects are started without proper understanding and often hinder rather than help. There is one thing for sure there is still no one model which can be applied to the up-lift-ment of the community. However charities are getting closer and there is one thing for sure, without the community behind you, which you are trying to help, that success is very limited and has a short life span.