Last Day of Community Service

Hello all, group one's pictures will be posted at some point tomorrow, so will a full blog from group two. Enjoy your night.

Group One

We spent most of our day reviewing what we had experienced with Emile and Fabian the previous two days. One of the things that they stressed heavily with us was to critic them and offer them as much advice as possible about the direction they were headed and we did just that. One thing we all wanted to be careful of was not to insult them or what they have been doing but at the same time demonstrate that we truly believed that they were doing good things for the community. One of the small items that we suggested changing today was one of their shirts that they produced. It had a cartoon character “giving the finger” and was intended as a sort of political statement. While it certainly accomplished those ends, it really isn’t suitable for an organization seeking funding from corporate sponsors.

Another suggestion we offered was using their connections. The organization has reached many kids and has been in many different schools across the Cape Flats (housing units) region. From an American business perspective, the world operates on who you know and we stressed that they should utilize who they knew in various industries to accomplish their end goals. They really wanted some support from politicians in the area and we explained to them that if they knew people that are connected to these politicians and could connect or recommended that their organization meet with that politician that they should try to explore this venue to garner political support. They immediately acted on the advice and Fabian arranged a meeting with a friend of theirs next week.

They seemed to really appreciate our advice and took it to heart. Fabian and Emile would like to take the Heal the Hood Project to a new level and hopefully our time spent with them will help them get there. We exchanged email addresses before we left and all look forward to hearing from them in the coming weeks

Group Two -RAPCAN

Today’s blog from group two will be uploaded tomorrow. Group two was accompanied by Eddie Summers today and we were very productive at getting several agenda items accomplished for RAPCAN. While it was the last day of our community service project, we recognize that there is so much more that needs to be done at this organization, however, because of a resource issues things fall through the cracks. Today the staff of RAPCAN sent us off with a nice “see you soon” versus the traditional “good bye”, we enjoyed this community service project immensely and hope we can continue our relationship with RAPCAN when we return to U.S.A. Hopefully we can motivate Marist College students get involved and help us with supporting the work of RAPCAN and other NGO’s in developing countries.

Group Three-Building a Community Center

Today our group returned once again to the township for one final day of community service to help get this community center off and running. Once again, we saw the lack of motivation from the community members and the hired workers to complete the project as we worked by ourselves. After two hours of diligently working, the contractor finally showed up and helped us out a little bit after multiple attempts at trying to get him to work with us. He remained working with us until the end of the day. Our day was somewhat mundane until about ten children from the township stumbled upon the work site and decided they wanted to interact and work with us. They sang, danced, and engaged in conversations with our group members before deciding that they would like to pick up the tools themselves and help us out. It was fun to work alongside the children and it was nice to see that there were some people in the community that wanted to help others. They worked very hard and helped us finish our task in a very short period of time and at one point, individuals from our group were trying to get involved and the children from the township responded with things like “hey, that’s my shovel.” They were the bright spot of the day and it made this day the best of the three. It was a great experience overall and we feel that we accomplished a lot in helping this community move forward with the building of their community center. This center will accommodate a variety of needs for the community, including having a place for children in the township to interact with each other, to gain educational insight, and most importantly to keep these children off the streets of the townships which is infested with gang activities, drugs, unemployment, depression and a low self esteem. This center will bring hope to a community that severely lacks it. It feels good to know that we did something to help them, and we almost wish that we had one more day to do a little bit more, not necessarily to continue the physical work, but to interact with the communities’ youth. There is no one in this world more pure than a child and it was from these kids that we heard some thoughts that turned our heads. The skills that they displayed were remarkable and surprising given their “background”. There are families living in these communities that have a chance, a way to get out, but it comes down to hope and believing that it can be done and actually going out and trying to reach your goals. Church/religion has provided the hope, but there is still the lack of effort in these townships to improve their state of living given the lack of support from the government and the outside community. “It doesn’t seem boring in America. It is really boring around here.” Said one of our young helpers. We just hope that it isn’t too late before they realize their potential.