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Sanele Ntshingana, VSA volunteer and awarenet project coordinator reports about his own project:

“On the 28th of April, Sunday- a group of 7 learners from Mary Waters High School who are currently doing the “Anti-littering Campaign” went to Rhodes University Journalism Department to record an Anti-littering campaign awareness audio clip.

All the 7 hip, fresh and enthusiastic Awarenet learners participated in the recording of the audio clip which will be used for anti-littering awaress. These learners were so excited and they jumped around the Africa Media Matrix studio facilities, full of joy as it was for many of them their first time to be engulfed by microphones in a recording studio.

With the constant practise of the two page anti-littering campaign drama script, the learners showed their perfection abilities as they fluently recorded the script without any hustles, their voices blending very well ending up producing a very good sound- this is plausible.

“It was very worthwhile to spend an hour with the enthusiastic learners on a Sunday than maybe sitting in my room watching a movie or something”

The audio clip will be embedded with “anti-littering awareness campaign” picture that will be taken on Wednesday, 01 May at the Kowie River by Marry Waters High school where Rhodes students in collaboration with awarenet CM Vellem Higher Primary School and Mary Waters High School leaners will clean the local river for awareness to the local Grahamstown community.”

The VSA was invited to attend the Makana Leadership Forum on Tuesday, 30 October 2012 at the Center for Social Development. The Makana Leadership Forum is an opportunity for leaders in civil society to form a strategic network of support and knowledge to help each other deal with the challenges of running an NGO. Topics of discussions aimed to cover all aspects of running an organisation shared by thought leaders with an in-depth understanding of the NGO landscape.

Speakers were Margie Keeton, former CEO of Tshikululu Social Investments, Pam Picken of Leadership in Development and Carol-Ann Foulis, the Early Childhood Development portfolio manager at DG Murray Trust. Sarah Hanton, who represented the VSA took the chance to network well with other NGOs and access information about grant and funding possibilities. This will be followed up by the VSA now.

The participants of the forum decided to meet on a regular basis now and also invited the VSA to the Literacy Forum, which will take place today.

The beginning of the year was very difficult for the governmental schools in the Eastern Cape. Again, the temporary teachers’ posts were unassured and SADTU decided that all teachers had to go ‘Go Slow’. In the end – as usual – mainly the learners suffered from all the regulations and protests. At many schools, days ended early on a regular basis and additional teacher meetings reduced classes even further. Learners started worrying that they would miss too much to make it trough exams once again.

Also the VSA had great difficulties to work at the schools as usual since we are dependent on the teachers and principals to open up computer labs for us and inform us about time changes. Many awareNet sessions were cancelled. But we also had some very good conversations with teachers and principals and listened carefully to their problems and needs. In the end, we understood the situation much better and were able to work around it.

On the contrary, learners who participate in any of our awareNet workshops seem to enjoy the practical and challenging work a lot and excitedly talk about it to their peers. As a result, more and more learners approach us independently to ask for additional awareNet sessions in the afternoons when regular school has ended. We were able to accommodate them and principals and teachers agreed to keep the computer labs open for longer – a great achievement!

Also the teachers are more and more aware of the possibilities that come with integrating awareNet into their classes. We appointed two new awareNet teachers at Mary Waters HS and CM Vellem HPS who are now able to teach awareNet independently from the VSA – another step forward in awareNet’s sustainability.

Mrs Funake Jacobs, teacher at Mary Waters High School in Grahamstown, is proud to be one of the first independent awareNet teachers in the awareNet community.

Since the Makana Local Economic Development Directorate supported the awareNet Peace Day Project, we have felt that an official letter of support from the Makana Municipality as represented by its Mayor should easily be obtainable. Indeed, everyone we spoke to at the Municipality agreed that this was in the best interests of the city and future projects. Finally, Anna Wertlen managed to receive an audience with the Mayor in November and a mere month later, i.e. today, we received the letter…

The VSA was encouraged by Riana Meiring (Director of Local Economic Development) to apply for funding from the Local and Regional Economic Development (LRED) Fund of the Eastern Cape Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEDEAT).

The DEDEAT is very interested in stimulating local economic development in partnership with municipalities, so the VSA went into partnership with the Makana Local Municipality (MLM) and signed a partnership agreement. This was followed by the grant proposal, in which the VSA is the main applicant and grant beneficiary and the MLM is the assisting partner.

We applied for funding for our ECSPIRT Project, which facilitates awareNet workshops and builds partnerships with various organisations for educational content. This is very exciting and we are holding our thumbs for a positive feedback.