More Volunteer Work in Cape Town

Working with Children at Sunrise Educare

Initially, Dine and I thought that we were going to work in an orphanage in Cape Town, as described in the International Volunteer HQ booklet, the NGO we signed in. It was disappointing at the beginning, when we found out that it was actually an educational centre, like a crèche. The length of time of our volunteer work was another big let down. Instead of working from 9am to 3pm, as described in the booklet, we actually worked from 9am to 12pm. We had a meeting with the founders of Dreams to Reality, the NGO based in Cape Town, to talk to them about these issues. They told us that it wasn’t their fault and they had asked International Volunteer HQ many times to fix the things we were complaining about in their booklets. We also sent an email to IVHQ giving them our feedback.

Luckily, we had a local friend Nick, who recommended us to another NGO (Mother’s Unite, read more on post dated 30/07/12), where we were able to find extra volunteer work. The work at Mother’s Unite kept us busy doing something useful in the afternoons. Nevertheless, I have to say that my sister and I loved working with the children at Sunrise Educare and fell in love with all of them, including the teachers. It was really sad to say our final good-byes to them all.

Sunrise Educare

We loved the 2 teachers and the nearly 30 children we worked with for the 6 weeks we were at Sunrise Educare. Teachers Florence and Glynnis were lovely with us and involved Dine and I in all school activities with the little ones. I read stories to them, taught yoga exercises, helped them with their food, to go to the toilet and played a lot with them in the playground. J The children were between 3 to 5 years old. All of them, boys and girls, loved to play with my hair. Sometimes I had 5 of them, all around me doing plates of my hair. I loved when they played with my hair too and nearly fell sleep every time they did it.

Teacher Glynnis, Clau, Teacher Florence and the children

Story Time

Play time

Having fun with the children

After lunch, they got read for their sleep from 12pm to 2pm. That’s when our work at the centre finished and we said our good-byes to them for the day.

Sleep Time

Some of the children were really naughty and often the teachers threatened them saying that they were going to “throw them out”. After a while, I also started saying this to the children as they became really wild when the teachers left them only with Dine and I. The most popular punishment was to order them to touch their toes. It was really funny watching the children doing it and I had to turn my face to the other side not to laugh, otherwise they would start laughing with me and not take their punishment seriously. On the photo below is Mava, who was always in trouble as his favourite pass time was to fight with other children.

Mava in trouble touching his toes!

On our last week here, we joined other volunteers, during a barbecue, to put food parcels together to distribute them out to the children’s mothers at Sunrise Educare. The food was donated to the NGO we were working for (Dreams to Reality), and was given to the mothers as a gift the day before Woman’s Day (09/08/12). The mothers were very grateful and thanked us a lot for the food. It was great!

Volunteers putting food parcels together

Volunteers distributing food parcels to the mothers

At Capricorn Township we didn’t see any mothers pushing their babies in prams; instead they all carried their babies wrapped up in blankets like in the photo below. The babies looked very comfortable, happy and warm cuddling their mothers back.

Mother carrying baby wrapped up on her back

The children playing on the streets of Capricorn also didn’t seem to have any fancy toys. We were delighted to watch some of them riding on a kind of skate, which looked like to have been built by themselves or their parents.

Children playing on the streets of Capricorn