Fighting for a future

Project of the Month, November 2011: Dassenberg Waldorf School, South Africa

North of Cape Town begins the desert-like area, where nothing grows, as well as the glum suburbs. Even further up north those people have settled, which during apartheid have been displaced from the attractive hillside location in Cape Town’s “District 6”. As a result, places like Atlantis and Dassenberg were established for those people in 1970.

In 1998, a small Waldorf school opened on a farm in Dassenberg with eight children and then slowly and steadily grew over the years that followed. The school is currently located on a leased property that it can now either buy or leave. The school would love to buy the property, but the parents are mostly from the surrounding townships and can already barely pay the low school fees and therefore the teachers (in South Africa the school does not get any government subsidies!) earn an income below the South African minimum wage.

In this struggle for survival, teachers and parents have decided not to give up and continue to fight for the existence of their school. We would like to help them.

Nana Göbel

More