iThemba serves the people of Mpumuza (Sweetwaters) in KwaZulu Natal, working to give them hope for the future through education, empowerment and new skills. iThemba is particularly passionate about the new generation – children and youth.
Just recently they have been given the opportunity to partner with a US university to do detailed monitoring and evaluation of their Life Skills, Mentoring and Early Childhood Development Home-based programme. This will give iThemba quality feedback, helping them to measure the effectiveness of their programmes and to better serve kids and teens.
Just recently MNCP, which works amongst very disadvantaged families in two informal settlements near Pietermaritzburg, stepped in to help four orphaned children aged 5, 6, 8 and 10.
Their 62-year-old grandmother, who had been caring for them, passed away from TB and they were left in the care of her 23 year-old niece who had come to stay with the family and take care of the grandmother.The children all lived with the grandmother in one crowded room, with very little ventilation, and were left totally destitute. MNCP provided them with a large food hamper and arranged for them to attend the local hospital to be tested for TB. Through the support of Thembisa and others, MNCP is are able to help families in crisis like this.
The Cross Over project decided to send the 9 students who wrote Grade 7 exams on a ‘vision trip’ to visit Ebenezer Agricultural Training Centre in Kezi.
Ebenezer has a great ‘learn and earn’ approach where their students learn to farm as a business and actually earn money by farming as they train so that when they leave they have saved up enough to purchase what they need to start up for themselves. This was a very worth-while trip in helping this ‘pioneer’ set of students to get a vision for what is possible in terms of setting up for life outside of a traditional school route. It will help these older students (and their families) see that it is worth their while to take hold of what is available to them through Cross Over and not just to drop out because they feel too ‘old’ for school.
It was quite an adventure and there were many lessons to learn! It was very inspiring for the Cross Over students and they really enjoyed meeting the students at Ebenezer and seeing possibilities – this was the main objective of the trip! Rumbi and Cecilia, the mentors who accompanied the students also found it helpful in terms of how the training at Cross Over might develop. They were particularly impressed with how the farmers they visited made use of what they had available rather than waiting to get materials that cost a lot of money.
