Volunteers for studytime

Everyday except Fridays there is 1-2 hours Study time for the children. We are using this hours to help them with their homework or to catch up on other school subjects. As the number of children who are frequenting Thakaneng was growing a lot in the last Year we need many people to be able to help all the children.

Therefor we asked a few month ago a pastor at Kruispunt Church in Potchefstroom whether he could help us to find Volunteers for Study time. We agreed that he will introduce his church and especially all the students who attend Cruis Point to our Project at one of their services.

The success is really awesome: For almost 2 month now every day at least 3 to 5 students are coming to Thakaneng to help with the homework, support the staff and play with the children. They are really creative and motivated to try new games and even want to establish a youth service at the CYCC.

 

At this point we want to thank all the people who are helping us to realize our vision of a better life for the children and we wish for a further successful cooperation in the future.

The grass project

Since the number of the DROP-IN children was growing that much we were thinking how we could get more space for the children to play as well as to sit and do homework in the Thakaneng Yard. Therefore we decided to take out the rubbish and the useless plants in the back, to put roll lawn instead, so that the place can be used.
With the support of Trompie, a local enterprise which gave us a great discount and the funds from Germany we were finally able to buy 600 square meters of roll lawn.

Fortunately we have a lot of strong boys who could help us to prepare the ground, after the Municipality of recreation and parks also supported us a lot by donating top soil and leveling the place.

We spent the whole Friday with putting the roll lawn and after hours of work in the sun the workers were rewarded with cool drinks and snacks.
As we only prepared one part of the ground, there was some roll lawn left which we could use to fix the grass on the soccer ground and some other places at Thakaneng.

Now we just water the ground as much as possible and wait for the results as the grass isn’t as green at the moment as it will be in summer. But even so far it looks quite good:

Therefore we want to  say to everybody who made this project possible:

Thank You so much for Your support!

Gold Reef City Outing

Last Tuesday, on the public holiday, we organized an outing for our boys to take them out of their daily environment and to motivate them for the coming school term. At the same time it was the last trip of the German volunteers from 2015/16.
With the support of the Midway bus company and the Tlokwe City Council, who paid the transport for the whole Project, as well as other funds we managed to visit Gold Reef City.
As most of the boys have never been there it was a Highlight after the weeks of exams and results.
Hereby we want to send a big THANK YOU to the people who made this outing possible!

We spent the whole day in the Theme park including lunch at Wimpy’s. Of course all of the boys love roller coaster and other attractions like the 4D cinema

and while the smaller ones enjoyed especially the chairoplane, the bigger ones only wanted to drive the Thrill rides.

All in all it was a really nice day and the boys likewise the staff had a lot of fun.

Nelson Mandela Day

With view to the Nelson Mandela Day on the 18 of July 2016, many organizations and companies supported Thakaneng.

The Army and the Police spent a lot of time with our boys, altogether 3 days were organised where they helpedto clean the Yard, to prepare the Garden and during which the soldiers played with the children and provided the Project with lunch.

Furthermore they prepared an “awareness of the danger of drugs” presentation especially for the older boys in our centre.

Today they finally sent a Youth group which did activities with all the Residential and Drop-In Children and all of them enjoyed it a lot.

 

Besides we want to acknowledge the support of Shoprite Ikageng who donated Burgers and a lot of other food to Thakaneng.

Thakaneng therefore sends a big THANK YOU to all the companies who help us to give our children a way to a better future and we hope for a long lasting cooperation.

Winter holidays and a new school term

The holidays are over now and a new school term starts for the boys.
For those who just came to Thakaneng it even means a new start in school generally.
Of course we will support our boys as much as we can and wish all of them a good start into the 3. Term!

But lets also have a short review of the holidays:
Some of the boys visited home and we are always more than happy about it as it means that they can rebuild or strengthen the bond to their families.
For the others we organised a holiday programme which included different outings.
Especially the older boys enjoyed the visit of the fitness studio Virgin Active in town where they got a fitness lesson and were taught how to live in a healthy way.

The Potchefstroom Golf Club offered a Golf Course for Beginners for some of the boys…

…and the Potchefstroom Horse Riding Club gave the ones who were brave enough the possibility to ride a horse, they even provided the boys with snacks!

Furthermore we organised an outing to the Potchefstroom Dam where we were welcomed with cup cakes and juice. Besides – with regard to the Nelson Mandela day on the 18th of July – they invited people from the Department of Sport and Culture who organised a puppet show for the boys and made bracelets with them.

At this point we want to say a big Thank You to all people which made these experiences for our boys possible!
As an end of the holidays and to motivate the boys for the coming school term we went on the last week-end to Fantasia, a game hall in Potchefstroom.
The boys enjoyed themselves a lot and after all coins were played everybody was hungry so we bought Spatlho on the way back to Thakaneng.

An end is always a new beginning

After 2 Years of successful team work we have to say goodbye to one of our appreciated Staff members.
Victor Bogatsu, our Social worker, left Thakaneng to follow the request of the Department which is in need of Social workers.
But for all of us it was not easy to see him leaving, so we organized a Farewell during which Children of DROP-IN and Residentials as well as the Staff members expressed their feelings and showed a lot of appreciation for their guardian and colleague.
After all we are looking back to many moving moments, full of laughing but also of serious conversations and problem solving.
So in the Name of our centre we want to Thank him for his commitment and the work he did for Thakaneng!

However we have to look forward and in this spirit we are very happy to welcome 2 new staff members:

Tidimalo Khoyo and Tshepiso Maruping, our new Social workers!
As the number of DROP-IN was growing a lot in the last month, we decided to employ two Social workers to ensure that all duties will be covered. The one will be responsible for the Residential children while the other one will mainly concentrate on the DROP-INs.

We are really looking forward to a long-lasting cooperation and we are sure that they will take the children and the work with them to their heart.

Dry macs for our children

The company “GoBigMedia” wanted to support Thakaneng and as it is wintertime now they decided to donate Dry macs for all our Residential children. But they didn’t just give them to us but they organized a real event for our boys!

It took place on the 20th of June 2016.

At the beginning of the event they brought food for everyone that each child loves: Burgers and cool drinks.

Besides the company made sure that there were enough possibilities for our children to enjoy the afternoon, so they brought 2 soccer balls and a jumping castle for the smaller ones. As it was a normal school day not only the Residential but also the Drop-In children of Thakaneng got the chance to benefit from the activities.

GoBigMedia invited the Municipal Mayor who came with his officials and hold a Speech for our children. Afterwords he showed his sympathy for our boys by having lunch with them, then he even joined the soccer match.

 

Furthermore representatives from Tlokwe paid a visit to Thakaneng to take part in the activities of that afternoon. In addition to the many visitors the Tlowke and Herald Newspaper sent an agent to take pictures of this event.

We thank GoBigMedia for that nice afternoon!

A passion like no other

Since our bigger boys team is registered in the Potchefstroom League again, they are playing almost every weekend a match against another League Team. As the Training was not regular yet they didn’t win most of the matches. But no matter which soccerfield, which weather, what time – always they were in.

 

 

And then, last Friday it finally happened what we were all waiting for:
They won their first match with  3:1 !! We never lost the faith in this team and now they got to the point where the boys were working together, knowing each others strong points and succeeded!
We are all very proud and we are looking forward to many exciting matches!
So far our Driver Dingaan is the Coach of the team with the help of the german volunteers and George, a previous Thakaneng child.
Recently Thakaneng bought soccer boots, socks and shin pads as well as many soccer balls for the boys.

Our new soccer team

For the first time in the history of Thakaneng we established a second soccer team!
The team for our younger boys.
As everybody knows how important it is to support soccer players from a early age on we want the team to become as strong as possible.

Yesterday, on Sunday, we played our 3rd match against another under 15 team in Ikageng and all the boys were so excited. Before the first match we managed to buy soccer boots for them and even when not everybody got his own boots its enough for the team to share.

After a equal first and second half the scores were 2:2. That was when the Referee announced to make the final decision of the winner by penalty.
Of course our boys have a lot of experience with penalty as they love to play in the Thakaneng Yard. No wonder that every shoot was a goal while our goalkeeper hold the first shot from the other team.
We are so proud of our young team because they are really doing well and we are expecting many good matches coming.

The playground is growing…

This week the “extension work” on our Playground -which was build by the old volunteers- is finally finished.
In the moment when the last worker left the playground, every single child on the Yard runs to gaze at the new big toys:
A round-about and 2 see-saws.

We tried to keep everything in order by only allowing 4 children at the same time to go on one see-saw, but if you turn around, you will find that in the very same second 10 of the children start trying to find a space to climb on. New Toys are just too exciting and of course we are all happy that they are enjoying it so much…