After more than two weeks of waiting to get response from my initial contacts and with no response coming from any of them, I decided to contact a former colleague in South Africa to help me. Luckily for me, he linked up with a friend of his by the name Rebbecca Moyo. Rebbecca Moyo taught at preschool and elementary levels for 29 years before she retired two years ago to start an NGO together with the husband. Their attention has been on helping children who lost their parents as a result of the AIDS scourge and those who have been invested with AIDS. They plan to start a school soon to cater for these children from preschool to secondary school.
Poverty is a great problem facing many African countries. South Africa, though ranked as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank is still trying to break the grip of poverty more than a decade after transition from apartheid. From my discussion with Rebbecca, more than 40% South Africans are living in poverty. Though the poor are mostly blacks, there has been an increased in the numbers of whites that are living in poverty in recent years. Rebbecca mentioned that there are now squatter camps for Afrikaners (White South Africans) and the population of the dwellers is growing steadily. She mentioned a particular camp named Coronation Park that housed close to 500 white squatters. This clearly shows that poverty is a general human issue not necessarily racial.
According to Rebbecca more than 5 million South Africans are living with AIDS and that about 200,000 died of AIDS yearly. South Africa’s HIV and AIDS epidemic is having a devastating effect on children in a number of ways. Some have become orphans, some have dropped out of school, and many has become “child parent” a phrase she used to describe young children that have taken up the responsibility of taking care of their younger ones as a result of the death of their parents. As a result of poverty and lost of one or both parents due to AIDS, more children are being removed from school- either to stay at home to care for the sick or to work in order to care for themselves or supplement the family income.
In my next discussion with Rebbecca, I would be asking her about cultural responsiveness in South Africa school in view of the pluralistic nature of the society and other issues that has to do with early childhood education.
Sounds like Rebbecca is already being a good resource for you. Those children sounds like they have grown up really fast because of the AIDS epidemic. What great work though, to help with children and families with AIDS, must be tough though I'm sure, seeing such hard conditions that children are dealing with. Thanks for sharing Shola.
ReplyDeleteI am having the same problems. However I think I will try a similar method as you did. In our society today kids no longer have the responsibility of just being a child. Several students at my elementary school wake up to fix breakfast, dress the younger siblings, and get to school. They enter the school with some much on their minds. When they leave they again step back into the role of playing guardian because their parents or parent is busy working etc. I find it very saddening when a child has to take on adult responsibilities before their time.
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