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