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Monday 28 January 2013

Busy Days in the After-Care Centres!


Life has been very busy at the Eva & Bjorn Centres, and at Hamburg After-Care over the last few months! At Bjorn Centre in Mgbaba the garden has flourished with the assistance of the Umthati project from Grahamstown, and there are even enough extra vegetables to sell which helps raise funds for school uniforms & food parcels for those most in need.

Staff from Fish River Sun and the Masibambane Primary School have offered us wonderful support too; we have received several boosts to our reading collection, and we are about to embark on some new activities through the Creative Development programme, so things are buzzing here!

Fish River Sun staff, Umthati Project, Masibamasane primary school pupils,
community members and staff and children of the Bjorn Centre at
 Mgababa Village on Madiba Day.


In Lover’s Twist, Eva Centre is also a busy nurturing place. NACCW workshops have given the staff a lot of insight into child development, communication, HIV awareness etc. The garden here is blooming too, providing welcome vegetables for local families.

Hamburg After-Care has been leading the way on the Creative Development programme with regular staff training sessions leading into an exciting activity programme on Thursday afternoons. The Nal'ibali reading programme has been in full swing and monthly themes (Women, Madiba, Heritage) provided more opportunities to learn and have fun.

Nokhanyo Nkani is now full-time operational manager of all 3 OVC centres, and, with her wide experience in Human Resources, she has been a great asset in helping to draw up systems and procedures. National Arts Council have provided funding for the Creative Development programme to expand and flourish at the centres so there will be more news of how the programme is shaping up in the coming months!


‘Ndim Lo!’ – ‘This is Me’ is the central theme of the 6 session introductory training: a series of one-day experiences which involve trainees doing their own ‘sensing’ (spontaneous creativity in response to different sensory stimulations), then translating this experience into planning a structured session for children, delivering the session that afternoon in the centre, followed by non-verbal reflection time through an arts medium in which their own experiences and their observations of the children are recorded.