An Alumni youth reflects on lessons learned

Some lessons can only be learnt with hindsight, as was the case with this old boy, who at first resisted the lessons and opportunities that Girls and Boys Town had offered him:

“Now that I’m grown up, I can see that the programme was designed to help me later in life. I keep in contact with my Family Teachers because I realised that all that they ever wanted was to help me grow as an individual and be the best I could be.

I regret the arguments I had with the staff and nowadays am very proud to have been at Girls and Boys Town. The life skills I learned, I use every day – dealing with all kinds of people, working with difficult clients ... I’m proud that I can handle situations so well and I owe all that to the programme!

Thanks to Girls and Boys Town, I received a bursary to study and am doing very well in the working environment. I’m a proud ex-boy of Girls and Boys Town, and if there’s any advice I can give the other girls and boys, it would be ‘don’t fight the system, work with it!’

To all the staff, I want to thank you for all that you do for children around the country! To the donors, without you I wouldn’t have had such a good upbringing! Thank you all for your kindness and your love. May you be blessed!”

Youth Satisfaction: A measure of success for residential care

We did it! Congratulations Residential Care for sharing in the mission of providing the best care for the youth that we serve ...

We conducted a study to highlight the voices of the boys and girls with whom we work, where they evaluated the quality of the care they received. We surveyed youth in our eight residential care facilities in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and these were the results:

Bridging the divide

Family Services work is often a journey of discovery and understanding for our Family Workers. They learn to respect every family’s values and traditions and understand that each family is different.

Eshnett Booysen and Maureen Mangoele were put to the test when they travelled to the rural village of Kunwana in the North West Province to assess Knox*, a 13 year old boy, and his family. When they found the clay hut where Knox lived with his granny and uncle, they realised that something was amiss when the granny refused to speak to them.

They managed to work out that the granny would only speak to them if one particular man was present. Although they didn’t fully understand why, Maureen and Eshnett agreed to wait for him. When he did, it made more sense – he was the Chief of the village who makes all the villagers’ decisions.

Realising that they needed the Chief’s help in order to help Knox and his family, Eshnett and Maureen worked with him to communicate with Knox’s granny. They learned that Knox and his siblings were at risk of sexual abuse by their uncle.

Girls and Boys Town helped remove the children to a place of safety, and the Chief assured us that other children in the village would be protected.

The job of a Family Worker is infinitely challenging, but Maureen and Eshnett are constantly learning and being enriched by their experiences of the different personal values, cultures, traditions and beliefs that they come into contact with.

We are grateful to have friends like you to share these experiences with. Hopefully it is a journey of discovery and understanding for you too!

Making community schools safer

The Department of Education recently identified nine community schools in nine different provinces that were experiencing high levels of crime and violence - and contracted Girls and Boys Town to address these problems.

It was clear from the start that these schools all had similar challenges – high levels of crime, gangsterism and drug abuse. It was also clear that the principals and staff had struggled to deal with these challenges.

The availability of drugs and alcohol from nearby taverns and hostels posed a major threat to the safety of learners and also to the safety of educators. Lack of proper access control was also a problem, with members of the community free to roam school grounds and staff acknowledged that discipline had collapsed. 
Physical fights among learners were common, and some educators were even being victimised and threatened.

The first phase of the project was a huge success – it involved all nine schools undergoing training in Positive Discipline and the Girls and Boys Town ‘Well-Managed Classroom’ programme.

The workshops couldn’t have come at a better time – educators were eager to learn alternative ways to discipline their learners, as well as strengthen their management systems. Deputy Chief Education Specialist in KZN, Mr Bhengu, said, “This is one of the best workshops that I’ve ever attended. It would be great for all our educators in KZN”.

He strongly believed the ‘Girls and Boys Town Education Model’ was the solution they had been waiting for.

Filled with hope for the future

Jarred* is 19 years old, in his final year of school and will be entering the real world next year to pursue his dreams.

Six years ago, he was ‘deported’ to our Glenwood Family Home because he was ‘too much to handle’. But what a turnaround! Before, no school would admit him because of his poor behaviour record, but today, he is Chairman of his school’s Representative Council of Learners!

Jarred is a member of the National Sea Rescue Institute and regularly participates in training, meetings and exercises. He’s even considering joining the South African Navy!

Thanks to generous donors like you, Jarred has had many opportunities for social and emotional growth, over and above the love and care he receives at our Family Home.

In 2007 he participated in the Outward Bound experience in the Drakensberg, where he learnt to believe that he could do anything through experiences of hiking, abseiling and canoeing. In 2008, he took part in a Motorbike Hike to the Magaliesburg culminating in a National Youth for Christ week, where he opened up to share some of his testimony publicly with other young people.

And in 2009, he went on a Wilderness Leadership Trail in the Umfolozi Game Reserve and learnt to risk trusting his trail companions enough to share things about himself. Jarred sums up all of these experiences as ‘changing his life for the better in a way that words cannot easily express – they become part of who you are.’

Jarred is an inspiring youth and we are certain that all of his dreams will be realised as he develops and grows his gifts every day. Thank you for the part that you have played in his life and personal growth – I am sure you join me in wishing him all the best for his final year and for what the future holds.

Young leaders share their journey & lessons learned

Magaliesburg, Macassar and Tongaat proudly announced the new Peer Group System youth Council Bodies and Mayors recently. Their jobs as youth mentors often find them facing their own personal challenges and opportunities for growth. These young leaders share their lessons learned …

Our girls and boys share their experiences and thank you, our donors and supporters, who afforded young people yet another ‘learning life lessons’ opportunity: 

“When our tour guide told us that we were going to camp in the bush with no fencing around the campsite, I got a bit worried, but hid my fear because I knew I would not learn anything with that state of mind.”

“This was a lesson to me: that in life we don’t always have what we want so we should use what we do have to the best of our ability. I’ve also learnt that to be happy, you don’t need a lot of money. You just need people around you who love you and to encourage you to do the best you can.”

“We all had a chance to do guard duty at night while the others were sleeping and it was actually very creepy but it taught me to take responsibility.”

“I learnt that team work is very important and respect goes a long way. Everything is quiet and you have a lot of time alone to think about your life.”

“Above all I started thinking about myself and my life. I learnt to work with others as a team and realised that in life we depend on each other and without the help of the others, I would not have been able to make it.”

‘I have learnt so many things – people should live simple lives and not cry for everything because it will come to them when the time is right; everything in life happens for a reason and when you make a choice from a place of love, you will never go wrong.”

We’ve seen one of our Dingle boys blossom into a phenomenal cyclist since he arrived three years ago. Pierre* came to us from a severely deprived background.

He showed an immediate interest in cycling and started repairing all of the bicycles at Dingle and even started cycling to school, which was quite far away!

Last year, Pierre’s Family Teacher entered him into the Argus Cycle Race. While Pierre was out training, he met a group of cyclists who belong to a cycling club. They were so impressed with his attitude and total commitment to cycling that they took him under their wing and bought him expensive cycling shoes and sunglasses.

They entered Pierre into his first race at the end of 2009, and he started right at the bottom of the rankings at 25. But he did so well in the race that he rose to a 4 in the rankings! The cycling club members were so excited about Pierre’s achievement and talent – they feel he could be a professional cyclist!

For the months building up to the Argus, Pierre trained exceptionally hard, sometimes cycling up to 150km in one day. He completed the race with three of our other boys from Dingle on Sunday 14 March and did exceedingly well.

Girls and Boys Town is so proud of Pierre and all that he has achieved!

* Name has been changed.