Education for Children in Rural South Africa

Hello,

Your support means so much to our community. You make it possible for children, youth, and adults in our community to be engaged and contribute positively to the world around them. You create opportunities for learning, for better nutrition, for creating art, and ultimately, for kids to be kids. Because of you, there is a safe place in our community for children to play. And, we believe in the power of play.

Play is a key component of learning at all ages. It lights up the brain and promotes long-term memory retention. The foundation of who we are as people is laid largely through play and ultimately determines our future aptitude. Through our theme-based, fun and playful approach to learning it is exciting and memorable. This was exemplified in many of the activities children and youth completed this term!

In the Early Childhood Development (ECD) classrooms children playfully paraded around the Thanda centre in masks inspired by the book Elmer by David Mckee. In the book, a multi-coloured, cheerful elephant explores diversity and inclusion when he tries to change his colours to blend in with the other elephants. In the end, we learn the other elephants love him just as he is and together, they dance and celebrate.

Our ECD Facilitators spent a lot of time exploring new themes, ideas, and games to create a unique, age-appropriate Creative Learning Curriculum for early learning, too. We have seen games with tennis balls, bean bags, and wheels focusing on physiological and social skills, as well as, art activities that align with a specific theme during story time. Another favourite is discovery walks! On these walks, children explore Thanda and discover something new in the world around them. Last week, they looked for items that started or included the letter ‘T’!

In our After-school Programme, we held two book festivals as an opportunity for students to showcase their work, gain new knowledge, and have fun with students from other schools. A notable activity was from studies on astronomy and solar systems. In one performance, students spoke as different planets and gave some key facts, including the exact kilometres the planet is from the sun - wow!

We see learning is a lifelong process and as an opportunity to play in everyday life. Too often we are asked to grow up and stop playing. By giving the gift of play to so many children in our community, we encourage you to seek out a childlike openness this summer and to ignite a different curiosity for the world around you. Play brings joy, and we cannot thank you enough for giving all that you do to our community!

Love, Thanda

Links:

• Check out our latest blog on the power of play!

The new year is already shaping to be a great one. We returned from summer holidays with a more refined, innovative, and sustainable strategy than ever before - in large part, thanks to your generous contributions. I wanted to share with all of you the impact you made at Thanda last year, from increased enrolments to improvements in game-changing skills, and providing nutritious meals – none of it could have been possible without your support. 

Last year, my personal goal was to get out from behind my desk more and participate in the wonderful activities that are happening every day at Thanda. In doing so, I have seen new and old participants grow into confident and curious learners who are able to speak about their work to a big class. In fact, a local teacher once told me, “Now when they perform in front of class, they take the lead because they are confident in their work.” I also received feedback from a parent of one of our After-school participants who commented that, “This is her first year in Thanda and I can see the change already. You don’t have to ask her about what she did at school that day, she is the one who tells us.”  This improvement in self-esteem is just one of the skills that you have provided children with the opportunity to build through our Creative Learning Curriculum. Our internal evaluations show that their literacy skills improved by 197% and empathy by 109%.

You helped our Early Childhood Development Programme grow from 19 children to  60 in four innovative classrooms inspired by themes such as The Lorax and the Colour Monster – some of the children’s favourite story books. Each classroom has a reading area, creative area, play area, and cognitive learning area. By supporting our Early Childhood Development Programme, you’re providing care and cognitive development for children a critically important stage in their lives. This is the age when children develop an active imagination that fuels their creativity, which sets the foundation for their ability to develop lateral thinking and problem-solving skills later in life. I find so much joy in spending time with the littlest ones in our community while they are creating and playing.

This year we found that former Thanda ECD students who completed Grade 1 scored 10-15% higher in Maths, English and Zulu than those who did not attend Thanda ECD, proving that your investment in early education has made a tremendous long-term impact. 

We believe that the learning process is more fluid and natural when it is fun and memorable and are thankful for a community of supporters who share this mission.Thank you for being a part of our family and for your support during an incredible 2017. I look forward to seeing all we can accomplish in 2018!

Warm regards,

Angela Larkan

PS. If you haven’t done so already, we re-envisioned our branding and are working hard to bring the colourful experience of our programmes and community centre to our online communications. Our 2017 Impact Report is inspired by the paintings of our centre and, I must admit, I am thoroughly amazed at how data can be so visually appealing and easy to read. If you haven’t seen it already, find it here.