Providing Outreach to Local Communities

Dear supporting friends,

I hope you all are well and enjoying a sunny summer… at least if you are living in the northern hemisphere. For the people in the southern hemisphere: better times are coming, as spring is on its way :).

The children of the Eco Club just went through a tough month, as they had to write exams. I am very glad to announce that they all survived and passed; well done all! The Eco Club was still alive & kicking, since the exams could not withhold most children from attending the Eco Club for even more education. A great reward for us as this shows once again how dear and important the environmental club is for the kids!

During the first lesson we worked on decorating our classroom to make it an even more inspiring and pleasant learning environment. We teamed up to hang curtains (early preparation for the summer to come!), attached some motivating quotes to the wall and did a big clean. Thanks to your generous gifts the classroom looks nice and fine again!

The next lesson was on advertising & media – something different and out of the box for Eco Club, but really important. We looked at tricky advertisements (even in their own village!) that use the ‘appeal to pity’ technique and watched convincing commercials. Although the media are tricky, we underlined that their techniques are not necessarily wrong or dishonest. Moreover, it is the person who uses a camera who decides what to show and what to leave out. The kids really are now aware of the hazards and secrets of the advertisers. Mission accomplished!

We also talked about rubbish, for example the ‘RRRC-principle’: reduce, re-use, recycle and compost. We discussed the rubbish problem in the local village. The children understand the problem and would love to use dustbins instead of burning their waste. We emphasized that, although it seems very difficult, they are the ones who can make a change. As Nelson Mandela said: “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

We ended the lesson with crafting wallets… out of old milk cartons! The children never saw this before and were surprised of what you can do with this regular type of waste. The hard work was rewarded, as it resulted in some beautiful and useful wallets.

A Dutch take-over at the next Eco Club! Four Dutch volunteers (including myself) introduced the children to the country of windmills, wooden shoes and tulips. Next to topography and the national anthem, we played Old Dutch games, such as sack race and T-shirt hanging. We ended the lesson with an estimation quiz. Do you for example know how far the walk from The Netherlands to The Oaks village is? Or how many times the Netherlands fits in South Africa? No? Look it up ;). The children as well as the volunteers had loads of fun. As we would say in the Netherlands: een geslaagde les! The students now enjoy their well-deserved holidays!

Thank you friends, for your continued support. We are thinking of you and cannot emphasize enough that your donation is more than precious. We still have many ideas and so much more we would like to accomplish! For example, we are planning to do more crafting, for which stationary is needed. Moreover, for the children to visualize how decomposition of different materials works, we would like to make a solid decomposition box so that they can follow the process day by day.

Best regards and take care,

Toine Vos, Eco Club teacher and Outreach Programme Coordinator

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