Teacher Support and Development

Bertha Tiemstra presented a well attended workshop on lesson planning at the Lovers Twist primary school. The response to invitations was good and 18 teachers from village schools in Bodium, Bell, Wesley, Gcinisa, and Crossroads attended. They found the workshop very useful, and Bertha assisted in developing modules for life orientation lessons in the foundation learning phase.

Bodiam Primary School

A teaching assistant (Andiswa Makhubalo) has been employed at the Bodiam primary school where one elderly teacher is responsible for three grades accommodated in two different rondavels. This has been a great success and has had a very beneficial impact on the children in the foundation phase at the school. The education programme plans to become much more involved in assisting this poorly resourced school in Hamburg’s neighbouring village. The education programme plans to start an aftercare centre in Bodiam in 2011.

Life Skills Development

The education programme organises regular OVC camps and outings for the children it works with. These have included two trips for primary school children from Hamburg Primary (65 Grades 4 to 7 spent 3 days visiting Port Elizabeth and 97 foundation phase learners went to East London for the day).

Weekend workshop “camps” for adolescents and younger children who are on ARV treatment or being prepared for treatment initiation have been held every 6-8 weeks at the Umtha Welanga treatment centre. The camps provide an opportunity to monitor the children’s treatment adherence, health status and psycho-social circumstances.

A programme of HIV/AIDS education, sex education, life orientation, group work and social interaction skills activities is provided by treatment centre personnel, visiting medical students and three young local peer-educators. The participants have also taken part in a STEPS workshop (discussion based workshop using a series of documentary videos dealing with issues related to HIV and AIDS), been taken on outings to East London to see movies, participated in music performance workshops and have made memory pots for the Trust’s major Guernica artwork for the Grahamstown Festival.

In May 2010, twenty-four of the children went on a long weekend trip to the Hobbiton Camp at Hogsback in the Amathole Mountains. They were joined by the children from the Trust’s music academy. Hobbiton runs a jam-packed programme of physical adventure activities which focus on co-operation, confidence building and group dynamics. The camp worked very well and the integration of the two groups provided an excellent learning experience for all.

Nomathemba Ngqondi has run three memory box workshops at Lovers Twist during the course of the past year, with the assistance of Nosiqibo Sinuka and Nosisa Majamani who have also been trained in the method. Each was attended by 20 to 30 children all of whom have experienced the loss of family members and needed assistance with the grieving process. Eunice Tokota from the Mgababa nursery has now completed the Sinomlando/CERI trainin in Pietermaritzburg and will soon start memory workshops in the Mgababa, Mpekwini area.

Staff Training and Development

The following formal and informal training has been provided to OVC centre staff:

• Nomathemba Ngqondi has run a training workshop for the new OVC staff members and those village health workers who had not previously been trained in memory work.
• A visiting occupational therapist from the UK, conducted a number of short workshops with the carers from the centres as well as the village health workers employed by the health project.
• Some initial training on working with disabled children has been done with village health care workers and OVC centre trainers as part of a training programme on primary health care.
• A two day “square metre garden” training course for staff from all three centres was held at Lovers Twist. Each centre received basic gardening tools, seedlings and compost to assist in establishing food gardens.
• Nomathemba Ngqondi and Nosisa Majamani (a village health care worker previously employed at the Lovers Twist centre) have been financially assisted with their B Soc Science studies through Unisa.
• Child rights and educare training are being planned. This will include a training programme on play as a developmental, therapeutic and education tool.