Physical Health South Africa Project #10010

Lifeskills for 2,587 Children in South Africa

by Keep The Dream196

Lifeskills for 2,587 Children in South Africa

Project Report | Feb 26, 2025
The Power of Participation - What we are changing!

By Louise | Managing Director

Color Run promoting Participation in Communities

I am so excited to share my update this week!

For those of you who like graphs and want to understand the impact we are having on the communities we serve, the families we work with and children we train, I have been compiling an annual report for our institutional donor KNH. I want to share visually what is happening since we started this project in 2023.

We have been focussing on Child Participation at family, school and community level. As part of children’s rights, children need to have a voice at these different levels. In 2022 we performed a CRSA (Children’s Rights Situational Analysis) which is basically we looked at whether the children were enjoying their rights at family, school and community levels and why not. We developed a 5yr plan from the information we gathered and have been implementing the plan since then.

We have identified 17 different Key Indicators and had the participants (parents, children, Induna’s and Teachers) rank the indicators out of a score of 4 overall with different levels indicating the change we were affecting.

From the CRSA in blue you can see very little participation was happening at any level. In 2023 we did a baseline collection of data before starting the project and as you can see we had already started impacting families particularly and some Induna’s through the Journey of Life training we have been doing consistently over the years.

In 2024, despite trying to mobilize the teachers it was very difficult to engage with them and bring them on board. So children were not engaged at all despite their constitutional right to participate at Learner Representative Councils (LRCs) meetings or at School Governing Board (SGBs) meetings. However, in the home and in the communities, the children are starting to participate actively.

Although it reads 2025 in yellow on the graph, our contract with our partners KNH finishes at the end of February every year so this is from 1^st March 2024 to 28^th February 2025. You can see that parents are far more likely to ask their children for their input on different issues. Teachers have now started to engage with children. LRCs are not at every school and child representation is not at every SGB but there is a willingness to start.

Induna’s despite their absolute refusal to engage with children, citing a lack of capacity, after training and reflection and KTD196 challenging those ideas, many of the trained Induna’s are holding Junior Community Meetings with the children and reporting back to the adults at the Community Level what they have discovered and how best to address the children’s concerns especially regarding safety and security.

This program will run till 2028, as we continue to bring about cultural change and inclusion, parents are starting to realize that what the children have to say is valid, and worth listening to, but also it is creating a cohesion effect and bringing families together.

Its too early to see the impact in the school but discipline is always cited by teachers as lacking, the students cite corporal punishment and the lack of respect for teachers as an issue. By bringing the two groups together equally, we are hoping to address both issues.

As all 3 spheres of the project develop, we are hoping to increase the social capital children hold, to ensure their rights as rights bearers and assist duty bearers to do their jobs as tasked by the South African Constitution. We want to make our communities safer for the children. It’s a huge undertaking but as you can see, we are the journey.

Thank you for making this happen. Our current donor only supplies a portion of the funds needed to run this project, that is where you are so vital. Thank you for your support, I hope you enjoyed this report, please leave a message on our website if you have any questions. The link is below.

Louise

Links:

Attachments:

Spider Graph for Key Performance Indicators (PDF)

3 Attachments

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Feb 19, 2025
Child Participation - So What!

By Louise | Managing Director

Avuxeni, minjani, Mfekile minjane!

We have entered the rainy season here in Tzaneen, ordinarily the rains come in November till February but this year they have been late, we started having rain, I mean real rain, in February. WE have had nonstop rain for at least the last 2weeks. Cloudy, overcast, drizzly around 20C. Usually we have hot, humid tropical thunderstorms but that is not what we have now, it is cold and wet with little thunder and lightning.

This affects the kids coming to school, to the children’s project, to after school activities in general. Most villages only have the main road tarred, if that, the rest is just dust roads or in the case now, mud roads. Everything is labour intensive because you have to trudge through the mud, imagine losing your shoes to the sucking squelch of the mud.

Uniforms for school are stuck in the dark ages, it is not yet time to swop to a winter uniform, even though it is 20C the poor the kids cannot change to a warmer uniform. They spend the day wet at school in summer clothes. Common sense does not prevail over bureaucratic red tape.

This is just one example of the things we as KTD196 are trying to address through Child Participation and Children’s Rights education and promotion. We are working with the children as I shared last week but we are also working with their parents, teachers and Induna’s (Village Chiefs).

What is really heart warming is that the Induna’s, despite culturally children not being considered to have the intellectual capacity to contribute effectively to adult discussions, over 20 of these village leaders have started conversations with groups of kids and building relationships. KTD196 has been asked to help facilitate the difficult discussions between the children and the leaders so that their views will be considered at the adult community meetings. This is a huge step forward in the right direction.

We are gaining momentum with our training, people are talking about Children’s Rights, parents are creating platforms withing their families to listen to the children. It is all exciting. Parents are letting their children decide their academic futures, their careers more and more rather than dictating that their child will be a doctor even if their grades are not acceptable, enormous amounts of pressure are put on the children to go to university when in reality very few actually make it to university and then the drop out rate in the first year is horrific especially for rural children. In 2000 42% of first year students drop out of university, in 2024 25% for African students enrolled in diploma studies drop out.

Bit by bit we are making a difference, through your support. We are steadily bringing change to the lives of children. Families are reconnecting, difficult conversations are being held. I love the work I do because I hear about the change we bring almost every day. You can be proud of the support you are giving to KTD196, we are having wonderful impact, real impact in the lives of the children and young people we serve.

Thank you and God bless you

Louise

Links:

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Feb 12, 2025
Feedback from the Field!

By Louise | Managing Director

RIghts and responsibilities game

Nkomo sweneni ngopfu!! (Thank you so very much!)

Last Wednesday I got to go out with the team and was blessed out of my socks. I went first to a SHG group where we were greeted with such enthusiasm, it was great to see the ladies so serious about the work of saving and loans and hearing the impact of what the program meant to them. The group was only a year old and already so strong that it is being considered for the next level, that of the Cluster Level Association.

Next, I spoke to an Induna, he was sharing about how things had changed in his village since the introduction of SHG and Scouts. Because of SHG and the CLA operating near by, a police forum had been founded and now crime had dropped considerably in the village. Not only that but he had realised, through training with KTD196, the importance of listening to the children and hearing, truly hearing what the kids had to say. After the training this Induna started holding Junior Village Committee meetings. They are at the forming stage, the kids are learning to trust him and the he is building relationships with the children.

Once this is done to both groups satisfaction we will come and help facilitate the problem-solving portion of the process. Actually, listening to children about the concerns the children have village wise, from bullying to improved services for children in the community. Currently, there are no sports fields or activities for the children, this is when they get bored and trouble starts to happen!

From here we went to a cub pack and a scout troop. The cubs where learning how to light matches and build fires safely. Also what to so if there clothes caught on fire so that even if it is not them, they know how to extinguish flames and treat someone with minor burns.

The Scouts were learning about Children’s Rights and their Responsibilities. When we started with this program we realised the kids had been taught their rights but in isolation of their responsibilities, hence children were using their rights against their parents to get their own way and parents were too afraid to stand against what the children were being taught in the schools.

So we came with the balance, we teach the parents about their roles as Duty Bearers and we teach the children their responsibilities as Rights Holders. This has created a much needed balance between parents and children.

All in all it was a lovely, very hot, successful day. It was lovely to hear from all the different voices about the impact KTD196 was having on the lives of individuals and at family level as well as communities. You should be very proud of the support you are giving and the impact we are having because of your donations. All of this is only possible through sustained, ongoing support, so thank you so much

Blessings

Louise

Which right fits with which responsibility!

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