Hygiene Promotion Box

I came up with an idea of putting together a so called HPbox that would contain everything needed to teach the kids about hygiene and importance of hand washing through a series of fun activities. Today I had my second workshop and the kids, as well as teachers, loved it. Since I would like to make this a sustainable thing I put everything needed (equipment, booklet...) in a box that could be used by the creches at any given time.

The box contains: HP booklet with all the activities, book Germs! written by Judy Oetting, posters, glue, scissors, pom poms, zip seal bags, textile colour,coloured paper, soap, pepper, liquid soap, glitter... everything:)

More pictures...

HIV workshop - high schools

After the tough crowd of principals and the teachers of the creches I took on high school kids:) This experience was even better than I imagined:) It was more of a mutual learning experience since they were more than willing to answer all of my "stupid" questions

Of course I started of with an easy one: "Raise your hands if you think that people in South Africa are not very faithful when it comes to relationships!" Man you should have seen how fast those hands went up in  the air:) eish.... They more than confirmed the thing I heard before, that cheating and promiscuity are not at all  unusual here in SA. Of course some "blame" it on their tribal heritage...since they still have polygamy. Xhosa people have given it up by now but the Zulu still practice it. It is no secret that  president Zuma (Zulu) has 5 wives, 20 children and some more fiancees:)

Imagine my surprise when after asking, "can a person get HIV if he/she has unprotected sex with an HIV infected individual?", I realized that there were still some youngsters that believed that you cannot get infected in this manner. Well, we live in 21st century and we all know the facts, and  lets leave the conspiracy theory alone for now, but still....   All becomes clear once they explain that apparently president Zuma publicly announced that he slept with an HIV infected person, took a shower afterwords and he was/is fine. Some shower that must have been:)

Here I gave just a couple of examples... as you can imagine, I was all ears and more than ready to put all my theories to the test:)

Check out a short movie here:)

Early christmas:)

Delivering donations feels like Christmas... and guess who's Santa:) Nothing in the world can beat this feeling...almost:) The kids are just so happy...even if it is just a little thing like some crayons or pencils. Today we gave out some jumping balls that were donated and the kids went nuts:) Just check out the clip and no comment needs to be added:)

SAEP and Early Childhood Education

Once in Cape Town I'll be working with SAEP in Early Childhood Education. According to their website the ECD Programme provides support for on average 15 independently-run township educare centres (known localy as creches) in the informal comunnity of Filippi. SAEP has helped to significantly improve the capacity of these centres which serve approximately 1300 children between the ages of zero and six in one of Cape Town's poorest areas.

Click here and learn more about SAEP.
Check out some photos of Early Childhood Development Programme.