Day 20- Project Day Westville and Umlazi-Durban area!
Day 20- Project Day, Durban Area
This day was a rather packed day as we ended up seeing three projects, as well as visiting the family of Ernest in Umlazi Township.
One of Westville Rotary’s largest projects is a community centre called Jabulani. The centre serves children and adults, providing everything from daycare and aftercare programmes as well as crafts and technical skills for adults. All of the people coming to the centre are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, but it was wonderful to see once again what local initiatives are doing to empower their communities. Unfortunately due to the holidays the centre was not official opened and thus we were not able to see it running as it normally would, however seeing what we did see, we can only imagine the great work being done.
Our second visit was to Streetwise. Westville Rotarians have also been involved with “Streetwise” which takes street children and tries first to reunite them with their families where possible, and where not possible houses them while educating them and attempting to give them a home and a type of family. For more information on Streetwise in Durban please follow the link.
Around midday we headed out to Umlazi to visit our last Noah Ark site. We had started this whole journey at the Noah site in Daveyton and it was nice to be ending with a Noah site on our last project day. The Ark is one of the very first Noah sites, and serves hundreds of children in primarily an aftercare programme. The CEO of Noah, Pat Sullivan, as well as other head office Noah staff were at the Ark to meet us as well all spent the early afternoon being entertained by drumming and dancing the children had been working on. As the guests of honour we joined the Noah staff and children for lunch. Seeing the children at the Ark reminded all of us what it is to truly be a child. Yes there is AIDS, but all of those kids where just kids at the end of it, and on our last project day on a warm afternoon in front of the sea all of us felt a since of accomplishment. The walk taught us a lot about ourselves and about HIV/AIDS in South Africa, but watching the boys dance we also remembered the faces behind the horrible HIV/AIDS stats and even more important we were reminded of the fact that every child deserves a chance to be a kid. After visiting the Noah site a surprise visit was made to Ernest’s childhood home. Drinking cool drinks in front of Ernie’s childhood home we spoke about what we had just done, could it be that we really did it? I don’t think it will truly set in till much later.
This day was a rather packed day as we ended up seeing three projects, as well as visiting the family of Ernest in Umlazi Township.
One of Westville Rotary’s largest projects is a community centre called Jabulani. The centre serves children and adults, providing everything from daycare and aftercare programmes as well as crafts and technical skills for adults. All of the people coming to the centre are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, but it was wonderful to see once again what local initiatives are doing to empower their communities. Unfortunately due to the holidays the centre was not official opened and thus we were not able to see it running as it normally would, however seeing what we did see, we can only imagine the great work being done.
Our second visit was to Streetwise. Westville Rotarians have also been involved with “Streetwise” which takes street children and tries first to reunite them with their families where possible, and where not possible houses them while educating them and attempting to give them a home and a type of family. For more information on Streetwise in Durban please follow the link.
Around midday we headed out to Umlazi to visit our last Noah Ark site. We had started this whole journey at the Noah site in Daveyton and it was nice to be ending with a Noah site on our last project day. The Ark is one of the very first Noah sites, and serves hundreds of children in primarily an aftercare programme. The CEO of Noah, Pat Sullivan, as well as other head office Noah staff were at the Ark to meet us as well all spent the early afternoon being entertained by drumming and dancing the children had been working on. As the guests of honour we joined the Noah staff and children for lunch. Seeing the children at the Ark reminded all of us what it is to truly be a child. Yes there is AIDS, but all of those kids where just kids at the end of it, and on our last project day on a warm afternoon in front of the sea all of us felt a since of accomplishment. The walk taught us a lot about ourselves and about HIV/AIDS in South Africa, but watching the boys dance we also remembered the faces behind the horrible HIV/AIDS stats and even more important we were reminded of the fact that every child deserves a chance to be a kid. After visiting the Noah site a surprise visit was made to Ernest’s childhood home. Drinking cool drinks in front of Ernie’s childhood home we spoke about what we had just done, could it be that we really did it? I don’t think it will truly set in till much later.
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