SAVF Aftercare
On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Briana and I helped at SAVF aftercare for primary school students, also in Soshanguve, where we are often joined by other Fordham students as their schedules allowed. Compared to Soshanguve South Secondary School, SAVF aftercare was a significantly more straightforward experience. On our first day there, the director of the site provided us with a list of projects they would ideally like us to accomplish. This included creating a form to screen children for eligibility, starting a garden to teach children life skills, making a daily program of activities, encouraging the children to read more often, and painting a birthday chart. Before beginning any major projects, we took a few weeks to get to know the students and better understand the routine at SAVF aftercare. We quickly integrated more reading into the program by taking students into the library to pick out books to read after they finished their homework. Many of the students enjoyed reading to us in English and were eager to do so everyday. Changing the atmosphere to encourage more reading is probably the change I made that I am most proud of. I hope that the students continue to read often at SAVF aftercare even after we leave.
The first of the physical projects we started at SAVF aftercare was the garden. The first seeds we planted in the garden never sprouted due to flooding from a rainstorm. From this experience, we learned that it would be best to plant the seeds first in little cups and plant them only after they have sprouted. The students were able to help plant the seeds in the cups and then we took them with us to better monitor the watering. Once they had grown too big for the cups we brought them back to SAVF aftercare and the children helped us plant them in the garden. However, when we returned the next week, we saw that the leaves had been eaten by rodents as the garden fence had many holes in it. Luckily, we were able to use some of our fundraising money to buy the supplies for a stronger chicken wire fence. Upon completing the chicken wire fence, we were able to plant more vegetables in the garden that we had grown in cups. Through this trial and error we feel more confident in the strength of the garden we are leaving with SAVF aftercare. However, like the change we made with reading, it is impossible to know if it will be maintained in our absence. With the aim of making our garden project more sustainable and in line with the director’s hopes that the garden will teach students life skills, we created a booklet to remind the students of the steps we took to start the garden. On our last day, we will give each of the students one of these booklets and a few seeds.
Although the garden and reading occupied most of our time at SAVF aftercare, in the last few weeks, we were also able to paint a birthday chart on the wall of the container and create a form that SAVF can use to screen children for eligibility to be a part of the program. We were successfully able to complete the majority of the potential projects that the SAVF aftercare director outline for us at the beginning of the semester. In fact, in regards to having the students read more, I believe we went beyond her expectations as she hoped that at least one day a week we would read with the students. We were able to make the students excited to read everyday we went to SAVF aftercare.
Final photos of the birthday chart and garden!!
We also had time to paint a South African flag with our extra paint.
We also had time to paint a South African flag with our extra paint.