By Wilma Jakobsen | Project Leader
A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR GENEROUS DONORS!
VYLTP is grateful! In May, through the insight of Mona Nerea Okello, our wonderful volunteer, we took on the goal of growing a core community and capacity of local young people. The hope was to begin to build our local VYLTP presence in the surrounding area in order to better welcome young people to Volmoed. With great joy we can say that this is now happening!
Because of your generous donations, we were able to hire a half-time youth worker, Siyabonga Vonco, aka Siya. Siya is a multi-skilled, talented alum of the very first VYLTP program back in 2016. He is a Volmoed trustee with prior experience working with non-profit organisations in Hermanus. He hosts a community radio breakfast show on weekday mornings, makes furniture and renovates kitchens, directs choirs and is well known in the local community.
Since mid-May Siya has focused on developing a core community of young faith leaders from the local communities of Zwelihle, Hawston, Mount Pleasant and Karwyderskraal.
Siya’s coming on board coincided with our first in-person week long workshop since Covid-19 started. What a joy! He prepared the ground for our June Taizé Youth Day and the Beloved Community workshop. He brought small groups of young people to Volmoed, and together with Wilma Jakobsen, Volmoed chaplain, they attended events at the Fynbos Festival. A marimba concert, choir concert, and interview of Justice Edwin Cameron, a retired constitutional court judge, were the highlights.
The plan worked well! Our June Taizé Youth Day was attended by over sixty young people, and the Beloved Community workshop began the next day. Twenty young people from Zwelihlel, invited by Siya, attended the Taizé Youth Day of silence and prayer/meditation, bible discussions and small group reflection, networking, and workshops on Africa, Gender Based Violence, and Care for the Environment.
Ten of them continued with the ‘Beloved Community’ workshop, facilitated by Seth Naicker. This was formerly the first week of our pre-Covid-19 ten-week program. This one-week workshop is our first step towards beginning our in-person leadership training programs again, as we discern how best to offer a hybrid program of in person week and weekend workshop and online courses.
Five of our young VYLTP community, beginners, aspiring and local artists, attended an art workshop with local artist Adele Fouché in the art studio at Volmoed. This was a highlight for them.
We are so grateful for this community building and leadership training. We continue to discern how best to operate post Covid-19. In September we will hold a weekend workshop in-person.
As always, thank you for your ongoing support throughout the year. We are enormously grateful.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORT AND ALL YOUR DONATIONS!
WE APPRECIATE YOU!
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