Facilities update - The Ilze Halliday Foundation

Facilities update - The Ilze Halliday Foundation

On the 20th I visited a facility in Soshanguve, about 30 minutes' drive North of the Pretoria CBD. This facility was started within a very poor community in 2008. At the moment it serves a maximum of 650 children at the centre itself and at a school in the district. The drop-in or after-school children receive breakfast before going off to school and in the afternoon's they are provided with lunch. The same goes for the little ones in the Junior and grade R classes. 
The little kids are housed in two separate tin huts. The huts have no nice, professional educational equipment like computers and overhead projectors OR proper black boards. The floors are cold, hard cement and the walls are, well it IS tin huts, so obviously it is tin. There is no extra funding for more windows, so there is not proper ventilation in any of the huts. There is no electricity or running water inside these buildings. Despite this, the staff of this project try their best for these children. They are not really properly trained teachers and are basically just volunteers from the community, lending a hand. They try very hard to give these little ones a proper basic education...the evidence is overwhelming when one looks at all the nice art projects and the letter exercises pasted on the walls. Both classrooms are dark and gloomy, or rather, it would be dark and gloomy, if not for the bright faces of the tiny students and the obvious passion of their teachers...not to mention the artworks and pictures on the walls, which is an obvious effort to brighten it all up.
The drop-in classroom, though, is quite another story...the tin walls are broken and sagging in places. The windows are all broken too. The place looks awful, although it is obviously clean and well-kept (or rather, as well-kept as they are able to).
The kitchen, also housed in a corner of one tin hut has no running water or electricity. Meals are prepared on a gas hotplate and all utensils and cleaning equipment are kept stacked neatly against the walls.
Toilets consist of two outhouses with adult loo's...there is no funding for kid's sized loo's at all and the little children are assisted by the staff if they want to use it.
The playground has no sand pit, no nice jungle gym (the one they have seem dilapidated and broken), no other playground equipment, except a broken swing set. The play area where the children are supposed to throw balls and run around is covered in thatch grass and loose dust and rocks.
In an effort to provide fresh food for the centre, a new vegetable patch has been prepared and is now awaiting seedlings and seeds. Food are contributed by the parents at times and sometimes financial donations are given so that ingredients for proper meals can be bought at a local cash and carry. Fees range from R 110 to R 150, if a parent is able to pay. If they cannot afford it, the children are NOT sent away...the centre still accepts them and care for them.
What struck me is the fact that these dedicated people are trying their best to make this place work. They go out to schools in the afternoons to assist the children there with homework and extra tutoring. They feed the children, try to make education fun for the little ones, arrange fete's and ceremonies, they are SO passionate about this. All this in the sight of all the poverty.....they don't have money for electricity, a land-line for their telephone or a ADSL for their computer (they only have one laptop), the only running water is from a single tap on the property, yet the impression I got was that everything was squeaky clean. What really got to me was that they have a vision for this place and a mission statement. 
Perhaps, when looking at this, we can see how hope for our future is a possibility. Perhaps somewhere, in future, we will see that all is not lost, not with people like these working to make the world a better place.