South Africa: Simple kindergartens for children in the townships.

The centre for Creative Education in Cape Town that was founded in 1993 is today the only independent teacher training centre in the whole of South Africa - not only for Waldorf teachers.

But the teacher training is not the only task Ann Sharfman and her colleagues have. With untiring enthusiasm they educate women from the townships for their pioneer work in developing simple Educare Centres that look after children from a few months old to six years of age.

More information:
Nonzukiso Mphele - a kindergarten assistent tells about her Educare Centre (8/2008).
WOW-Day helped 2007/08.
Two true stories, through which you can bring the destiny of children and adults in Cape Town home to lower and middle school children of your school.
Miracle in Cape town - another true story from Ann Sharfman (8/2007).
More about the Centre for Creative Education (6/2007).
Two other reports are included in our newsletter Autumn 2006:
Hopelessness and the origin of change
Virginias Educare Centre 

Difficult circumstances….

In the townships around Cape Town there is unchanged poverty. This has not slowed down the steady stream of people coming from the country who hope to find work and future perspectives that are no longer available in the countryside.

For the children the change of location brings with it no comfort because in the towns both parents must leave the children alone all day while they go in search of some kind of work to earn the money they need to buy food for the children to eat in the evening. Thus even babies sometimes get left at home alone until their mothers come home. The children often spend the whole day on the streets leading many to get into trouble in the often criminal environment.

Many of the parents feel they can no longer bear their life situation. Fathers leave their families, mothers take flight in alcohol. AIDS is also rife. The destiny of such families has rarely any happy moments.

The Waldorf Educare Centres often provide the only light in the darkness of many children’s lives. Here they are lovely cared for by committed women and they can experience that they are welcome in this world in spite of the enormous problems that surround them.

Since this work began in 1994 the Educare Centres have gone from strength to strength. Peter van Alphen who helped develop the training at the Centre for Creative Education estimates that over the last 10 years some 4,500 children have been able to visit the Educare Centres. These children were enabled to have experiences that no one can take away from them and that will help give them much strength for the future.

The Educare Centres are naturally not beautiful perfect little Waldorf Kindergartens such as one finds in Germany. They are to be found in townships and reflect the conditions to be found there. They consist of the simplest humble rooms made out of whatever material is to hand, wood, corrugated iron and so on.

... and brave women ...

The kindergarten teachers are dedicated women who themselves come from the townships. After their training they are directly responsible from between 60 and 100 children, many of whom are only a few months old. These women make it possible for the parents to work or to seek work, while they look after the small children, play with them, sing to them and much more besides.

For these women the personal significance of their training and their future tasks is hugely important. Everyone in the townships seeks work. What could be happier than this endlessly significant work with the children?

At present there are over 100 women in training for their future work in Educare Centres.

... who get together.

In 2003 twelve women who had completed their part-time training founded a kind of Network. They were so inspired by what they had learned that they wanted to continue the learning process in order to become progressively better Waldorf educators in the interests of the children in their care. They call their partnership "Isiseko Sobuntu" (The foundations of humanity). They visit each other, visit the Educare Centres and advise each other where and when they can. Naturally they regularly send their assistants to further training courses.

The twelve women of Isiseko Sobuntu alone are responsible for almost 900 children in their townships (Khayelitsha, Philippi and so on). There is for example Maraldea from the "Strawberry Play Centre" who cares for 120 children; theer is Angelina, Noxolile and Nomathoza who care for 250 children in their Educare Centre " Nontsebenziswano" in Philippi Township, and there are Nomvula, Nomakhaya, Virginia, Maurine, Noma-India, Khunjuzwa, Nomkhaya and Elsie who are responsible for eight other centres in Khayelitsha, Delft South and Old Crossroads.

With remarkable courage and incisiveness these twelve women and the others who have completed the training go about their work. This work of helping the little children who live in the townships itself needs much help and support. Most of the Educare Centres have no chairs, tables or windows. When the women of Iseseko Sobuntu were able to acquire a sewing machine through donations, they made curtains for their Educare Centres that now radiate soft light in the rooms. For these children such an experience is like a festival.

It is a long journey these women have undertaken. But with incredible energy they are working on the transformation of the difficult circumstances they live in the interests of the children in their care.