Day 8-2nd day of Community Service and Frustration

Day two of community service prove to be thought provoking for all----Today's blog will be a little drawn out, however, the students discuss their frustrations with social issues facing their respective organizations.

Group One--- Hip Hop Group

Today we(Allison, Tiffany, Joel & Marissa) traveled to a primary and secondary school to experience a portion of what Heal the Hood Project does for the local communities. On our first stop, we visited Mrs. Stein, a counselor at a primary school with a population of 1,400 kids. She is the only counselor for the students in the school. We were able to ask her several different questions regarding the students and her job at the community. She acts not only as an advocate for these students but also as a friend. She told us that one of the major problems that kids face in the school is drugs. Mrs. Stein claimed that the best way to keep students away from drugs was to demonstrate that someone really cares about them and offer them alternatives, i.e. Heal the Hood Project. She believes that the drug problem is directly related to the lack of parental interest in what children are doing, however Mrs. Stein is hopeful and through her work seeks to redevelop parental/child relationships.

We then went to another school where the organization partook in a school talent show. Some of the kids went in front of the audience and preformed a variety of dances; mostly breakdancing. The show took a pause and members of Heal the Hood Project’s dance team performed a few basic moves in front of the kids. Following this brief dance Emile, one of the founders of the organization and former member of Black Noise, had a dance off between the students and awarded prizes to the winner. Throughout the performance, Emile highlighted the necessity of identifying themselves as Africans and not with foreign culture; this was to promote a sense of pride in their culture. Only to elucidate this, he pointed out that one of the songs that they danced to was “Smack That” Eminem ft/ Akon.

Group Two-RAPCAN

We (Hannah, Meghan, Ashley, & Lauren F.) started our second day at RAPCAN in the office working to get our project off the ground. We met with Wilma, one of the RAPCAN representatives, to go over our plans and iron out some details for the new child abuse disclosure forms. Wilma thought it would be a good idea for us to actually meet with some of the instructors who will be using these forms in the schools to ensure that the forms met all of their needs. The first school that we traveled to was the Zerilda Park primary school where we had the pleasure of meeting with some special education teachers who helped us to come up with ways in which to improve the protocol. At the second school, the Christian David Primary School, the teachers that we were supposed to meet with were still in another meeting, so we had some time to hang out with the kids during their recess. Both of these schools were extremely lacking in resources and instructors with too many kids in far too little space. The hardest part of our project thus far has been the extreme time constraints we are under. We have been given the difficult task of improving a system that has fallen by the way side and has not been helping the children that it was intended to help in only three days. Now, having met these kids we want nothing more than to ensure that they are taken care of and that there is a system in place to prevent anymore kids from falling through the cracks.

Group Three-Building a Community Center

Second verse, same as the first. Our (Mike, Evan, Chelsea & Lauren C., Matt& Prof. Eddie Summers) day was basically the same as yesterday in terms of the labor. We backfilled in around one side of the future community center’s foundation, then we collected and removed all the garbage and debris from the center of the site as well as the remaining dirt mounds. A pleasant addition to the day was a walk through the township streets as a break to view the area and greet some of the people. The flimsy self-made shanties were certainly the norm for the people’s housing with a few more established concrete shops like a tailor and car parts vendor. We were delightfully surprised when we were unexpectedly invited into an education center by one of the women who ran it. The children were from ages 2-7 and just as before in the primary schools the children were ecstatic to see us. We finished up the day with some more digging and took the mini bus back to the hotel just as tired as the day before. We felt that we had accomplished a little bit more today then yesterday and we are all looking forward to tomorrow’s tasks and we are told that we might change it up with some outside clean up at the local library.








Group comments as a side note: A discussion on group frustrations.

Group 1

One of the issues that have become quite evident as we work with the Heal the Hood Project is the lack of support for the organization. There is a need for the group to exist and their intentions are quite good but they don’t have the support to assist in the logistical ends of the organization. They certainly have a well put together concept and the connections in the community to work with the kids but when it comes to collecting corporate sponsors so they have money for their events, they simply can not do it. The organization members have motivation and demonstrate a vested interested in the community. They are people of the arts, as one of the members had said, and not of the business world.

One of the things we tried to help them with was putting together a presentation that would appeal to the corporate world because it simply didn’t exist. What they had was a good attempt but misdirected. If they had the support and help to better organize themselves and clarify their goals, their organization could do more. As it stands, they just sneak by and it is frustrating to see.

Group 2:

Some of our frustrations are similar to that of the other groups’ feelings, in that there is a complete lack of support for the organization. The number of children abused is large, overwhelming, and absolutely more than the organization can handle. What really came into focus for us today is, not only is there a complete lack of support for the organization and its work, but the lines of communication between the school, the organization, and the government are null. Within the schools themselves there is no system to keep record of student’s behaviors. In the second school we visited today there appears to be a severe apathy on the part of the teachers and administration, but in reality it is most likely the result of extreme frustration and hopelessness. Teachers are tired of doing long hours of extra work and not seeing any immediate results.

Group 3:

Some frustrations that have developed within our service group working at the site of a future community center in the Vrygrond Township are centered on the unresponsiveness from the people. There is little to no work for the people who live in this township (around 90% unemployment in this community, which is not abnormal for all the townships) and when there is work it is sporadic and the pay isn’t great, individuals receive around 70 Rand a day (~ $9.50). There is also a huge lack of trust within the community. The people are reluctant to give money to contractors to build needed structures because more often than not these contractors, who are not by any means begging for money, take the money and distribute it sparingly for materials and for employing workers who are less skilled so that they can be paid less money. This is most likely a major reason why jobs are few and far between and take forever to complete. With all this in mind it is easier to see why there is crime, violence, gang activity, and substance abuse in these poor communities (not much different from poor populations in the U.S.A.). Communities where the children do not attend school, the young and able do not have much opportunity for jobs and where the birth rate is higher than in other communities.

We tried to encourage a few people to help out or just get involved in the community in general, but they were unfortunately unresponsive probably due to one of the reasons mentioned above or maybe even a mix of them all. We are still proud to be helping and hope that our effort, no matter how minute they might be, will create something larger in the future.

Day 7--1st Day of Community Service Projects in the Township of Vrygrond

Today's journey started out in the Township of Vrygrond. It's located about 20 minutes outside of the central city of Cape Town and is home to a number of poor townships. Students embarked on three different community service activities. Group one helped a local nonprofit that utilizes hip hop as a tool to effect social change, Group two worked with an organization called RAPCAN center, which stands for Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. The third group worked directly with township leaders to build a community center. Please find below today's blogs and pictures.
Vrygrond Township








Group One

We weren’t sure what to expect of our day when we were told that we should be prepared for some Hip Hop moves and music. We were given the opportunity to utilize our education and experience to assist the Heal the Hood Project. This is a grass-roots, non-profit organization that was established by a former member of a group called Black Noise; Emile Jansen. After brain storming with one of the members of the organization, we decided the most constructive use of our time would be revamping their press releases, funding proposal and creating a portfolio out of all the press they have received since their inception as an organization and the work of Emile Jansen. One of the troubles the group had was finding sponsorship from corporations to promote their program.

Between the five of us in the group, we had experiences in the disciplines of political science (Joel), communications (Mike), business (Evan), public administration (Allison) and urban policy and management (Eddie). Based off of our experiences and backgrounds, we did our best to collectively decide the best approach for the project so that they could garner support for one of their future events and potential fundraising opportunities. We advised them to develop a clear mission, a consistent branding across their projects and retail items and construct their funding presentations/strategic communication materials to target corporations that could become potential sponsors. We concluded that they needed to highlight their intangibles like building self esteem, teamwork, and decreasing crime and gang participation by using Hip Hop as a tool and not Hip Hop solely.

Group Two

We spent our day working at the RAPCAN center, which stands for Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. RAPCAN is committed to developing child abuse prevention strategies to combat the patterns of abuse which affect the lives of children and adults everywhere. They reach this goal through adult training, educating, and informing children, material dissemination and advocacy. RAPCAN is committed to working actively with a non-racist, non-sexist, developmental framework, and promoting the rights of children. The system in place here for monitoring the welfare of children is quite different from the US child welfare system. There is a severe lack of people and other resources to effectively monitor the status of the children in the system. Our assignment for the community service is to create a new process for the schools and the RAPCAN program to create a way so kids don’t fall through the cracks and to ensure that children who need help actually receive it. We had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people who are doing amazing work in their community and who are dedicated to creating positive social change. We were told some truly horrifying stories of abuse today, which only motivates us to want to do as much as possible to help this amazing organization. Our only hope is that in the little time we have here we can create something that has a lasting affect and positively benefits the lives and welfare of children.





Group Three

Today was our first day of our community service projects in a township called Vrygrond. Our group was assigned to help start the construction of a community center from the foundation on up. All that had been accomplished before our arrival was the placement of cement cinderblocks in the shape of the community center. There were large piles of dirt and our job was to fill in the holes around the blocks. This was a difficult task because the dirt had large rocks, garbage, and old clothes in it. From there we had to dig up the grass in the center of the foundation. At this point we started to realize that living in a developed nation like the United State we take certain things for granted. Matt pointed out that if we had a wheel barrel the job would have been done much faster. Other tools as well could have come in handy. Marrisa was a great motivator. She kept reminding us that we were not just going through the motions of digging; she told us to stop and take it in. We were in a township helping to build a community center that could one day benefit more people than we could realize. We were glad that Marissa gave us some perspective on our day’s activities because it is very easy to lose sight of the end goal given the intensity of manual labor. We went into today not having any idea what we would be doing and ended the day feeling like we begun to help the township of Vrygrond. We ended the day with a lecture by Eddie Daniels, a political prisoner during the apartheid regime. Well we are off tune in to tomorrows adventures, who know what the day will bring, we will be equally surprised.

















And they are done!


Lecture with Eddie Daniels