Stories from the crèche: 4th Quarter 2016

For children to reach their full potential it’s crucial they receive Early Childhood Development, a chance for them to grow mentally, physically and emotionally within a safe learning environment. With that purpose in mind our ECD programme aims to improve the quality of learning and to increase preparation for school readiness for children under the age of seven; a task we’ve taken to heart over the past three and half years.

As we’ve worked alongside 23 crèches in the Amaoti community we’ve watched them grow and gain essential skills to better the lives of pre-grade R children within the community.

During the 2016 year we slowly started phasing out in the crèches in the Amaoti area, testament to the success of the programme. With crèche owners now empowered and equipped with the necessary tools to improve active learning within their ECD centres, they have the opportunity to stand on their own and become self-sufficient, small businesses. We will still continue to feed the children in these crèches.

This year has also been an incredible time of expansion and we’ve assessed a number of crèches in two new areas, opening up opportunities for future involvement. We look to the new year with excitement and anticipation for what it holds, our dream of seeing children reach their full potential continually pushing us forwards.

Stories from the crèche: 3rd Quarter 2016

We dream of seeing active learning taking place in crèches around South Africa, where Early Childhood Development centers are not just a baby-sitting service but a place for young children to learn, develop and grow.

For the past three years, we’ve been working tirelessly into 23 crèches in Amaoti through empowering ECD center educators and owners with essential education and enterprise skills. There have been great successes and as we prepare to slowly step away from them we look back at the programme through the eyes of our ECD mentors.

“Firstly, I would like to say it is a privilege and honour to serve the Amaoti community through ECD. Working with little ones gives me the reason to serve God to the fullest. Through The Domino Foundation I’m now a qualified ECD educator with ECD NQF level 4 and am able to assist and mentor ECD teachers in the community to implement active learning in their ECD centers. I have seen a lot of improvement in the crèches we’re working with, with some being registered with the Department of Social Welfare, some in the process of registering. For all the crèches we’re working with I see active learning taking place.”

Zanele Gumede

“ECD in Amaoti has been a very exciting experience for me. It has shown me the potential I have to influence the people around me to take education seriously from a young age. There has been transformation in the teachers and it has improved the children’s skills and learning abilities. Active learning now takes place in many of the crèches and teachers are passionate about teaching learners and developing them in all areas.

In the last year, there have been some exciting developments. Two of our crèches have undergone registration and are well on their way to registration – which has been one of our main objectives. One of the crèches also had a challenge where they had to close down due to another day care operating nearby causing many learners to leave. By God’s grace they decided to operate in a different area and have managed to continue working in their church building and now have a larger amount of school learners.”

Nauleen Luthuli

To continue positively impacting the ECD programme we’re looking for these items:

• learning resources for ages between 0-6 years (skipping ropes, puzzles, play dough, stencils, big lego blocks)
• bright, funky material for our bean bag project (squares of 16cm x 16cm can even pre-cut)
• Stationary (fat kokis, crayons, powder paints, colouring books/ pages, paper, chalk)
• scrap paper collections (children can draw on the back of them)
• nappies, wet wipes, toilet paper
• cleaning materials to wash floors, tables/chairs, dishes etc.

The Domino Christmas Story

This Christmas, join in The Domino Christmas Story
and spread the festive joy!

Help package Christmas ‘loveboxes’ for vulnerable children in the Amaoti township.

We work with 32 crèches on our ECD programme and benefit over 1000 children on a daily basis.
We are wanting to place a Christmas present
into the hands of each of these children on
Christmas day to share the love and make a difference
in the lives of these little ones.

There are 3 easy steps to contribute to this awesome drive:

  2 options:

1. Grab your friends & Colleagues, Download Santa’s Christmas Parcel List (valued at R150ea, below!) and get shopping for all the items for your chosen age group ‘Lovebox’!

2. Donate R150 to The Domino Foundation for us to put together‘ Loveboxes’ for the children!

 

(Booking of time slots essential!)Bring your gifts, wrapping paper, sellotape and Christmas cards to 125 Adelaide Tambo Drive, Durban North On Thursday 27 November or Friday 28 November And join in the packing festivities with us!

 

 

Bring your Christmas Parcels and place them under the Domino Christmas tree at 125 Adelaide Tambo Drive on Thursday 27 Nov & Friday 28 November and join us for the “Giving light to hope Ceremony” at 19h00 on Friday. We will deliver Christmas parcels during the 1st week of December 2014 before crèches close for the holidays.

 

 

Here are the Santa Christmas Parcel Wishlists:

 

To read more about this awesome day visit our website: www.domino.org.za/dominochristmas.htm

 

Literacy Effect 10/14

Over the next 2 months we’ll be taking a seat in one of the literacy lessons that happen weekly to see what goes down everyday and the various methods our literacy tutors use to teach English to predominantly Zulu children.

#2 SOUND BUTTONS

Sound buttons is a whole class activity. The educator works with the children to develop blending skills to read words.

How is this done in the classroom?

• the educator writes a word to read on the board
• the educator puts a dot [sound button] under each sound / blend / digraph
• children say the sounds as the educator presses each button
• children squeeze the sounds together and read the word

Sound buttons help the children understand that the sounds a word is made up of can be blended together to read that word. Children can think they need to remember each word or think reading is all magic!  Sound buttons supports children in developing skills to read words. Children develop skills in blending to read words.

The benefits of sound buttons

• Supports children in developing skills to blend sounds together to read words
• Enables children to develop skills to read independently

We want the children to develop the necessary skills so when they come to an unknown word they can apply their knowledge of sounds, blends and digraphs to read the word.   As a project we seek to empower children so they can read independently.

Read more from the October 14 Domino Effects Newsletter here:

Babies Home Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

Life Skills Effect 10/14

Our Life Skills program is multi-faceted. We work into various spheres in the Amaoti community. From life skills lessons, to ‘Boys and Girls Club’ which offers positive after-school activities, to obtaining I.D. Books and birth certificates for desperate individuals through our Home Affairs Liaison, Judy Cater. Either way, we seek to empower the individual and help them path the way to a brighter future.

Life Skills Lessons:

“IF YOU ARE VALUABLE, THEN EVERYBODY ELSE IS VALUABLE TOO.”
The youth workers modeled a necklace to their classes and asked the question – “If we removed any one bead from this necklace, would it be how it was intended to by its Creator?”
One of the pupils answered profoundly: “Not one bead must be removed because as a person, that bead adds VALUE to the necklace.”

Our lessons impact hundreds weekly, reaching 3 schools in Amaoti and encouraging each pupil to make wise life choices that will prosper them and give them a hope and a future.

Girls Club:

After an amazing Pamper Day (read all about it here), Girls Club has officially ended for the year. So to pay tribute to all the amazing lessons and wisdom that was imparted this year, we’ve decided to dedicate every month to a value that was taught or a conversation that was had.

This month we focus on the teaching of teenage pregnancy.

Our youth workers discussed how it’s better to wait until marriage before having children. They informed the young teens as to how a happy family is the best environment for a baby and that in the current stage of their life their goals should be based on achieving academically.

Since the beginning of our Girls Club we’ve seen a drastic change in the amount of teenage pregnancies in the schools we work into. The change is evident, and we will continue to teach until we see an entire community impacted and a new generation rise up!

 

Read more from the October 14 Domino Effects Newsletter here:

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

General Overview

 

 

Literacy Effect 9/14

September the 8^th was International Literacy Day.

“Our words are powerful. The potency of a written word can arm a person with the wisdom and ability to make a difference… A literate person is empowered, strengthened and has a more hopeful future. But with approximately 860 million illiterate adults worldwide, the time is now – more than ever – to fight for every human’s right to be educated.”

During the course of the week, we released videos and posts about Literacy and Illiteracy in South Africa and the methods we utilize to teach literacy in the various schools we work alongside with.

LITERACY LESSONS:

We continue to teach close to 1000 children at 3 different schools in Amaoti. Our Literacy teachers work with children in grades 2 and 3 to develop phonic skills of the learners in order to equip them to read and write in English. We reinforce various sounds with the children, introduce them to new sounds and apply the knowledge of these sounds to the reading and spelling of simple words.

Our Literacy workers/tutors use various techniques to teach these sounds. Over the next 3 months we will be focusing on the individual techniques we use and take a closer look at how they work.

#1 SHARED READING

• Shared reading is done in grade 3 classes.
• The children sit in the front of the class and read together, in unison from a basic English reader.
• The teacher points to the words as they are reading.
• This type of learning encourages every child to participate and read aloud.
• It is an opportunity for learners to apply their knowledge to the reading of a text.
• It develops their reading AND comprehension skills.

 STAFF TRAINING:

Our staff have been through a process of peer mentoring, where they have observed each others’ lessons.

Peer mentoring:

• helps people to learn from one another
• is a way in which staff can support their colleagues by helping them to identify what they are doing well
• allows feedback to be given
• can help to promote good practice

Each tutor was also asked to identify a learning point, something they had observed in their peers lesson that they wanted to apply to their own teaching. This worked very well, each tutor took away with them something to implement to improve their own teaching.

DONATIONS:

We received incredible book donations during the Literacy Drive! Over 300 books have been sent out to various schools in Amaoti. We’d like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for everyone’s support during this month and their contribution to fighting illiteracy in our country.

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

Life Skills Effect 9/14

Our vision in the Life Skills Programme is to empower learners to make wise life choices, instilling in them a sense of self worth and purpose and offering them hope for the future.

BOYS AND GIRLS’ CLUB:

Members of the girls’ club in an aerobics class.

As the term winds down, we officially ended Boys and Girls Club for 2014. This year has been an awesome one for both clubs. 122 girls from grades 7,8 and 9 have participated in the Girls’ Club. They’ve had incredible times of teaching, aerobics classes and awesome connect times and look forward to ending off the year with an excursion/ pamper day! The boys club has engaged with all things soccer – from tournaments against Northwood and Vopak, to friendly matches and guidance from Amazulu Coaches. 92 boys have been a part of the club this year and we look forward to an even greater response next year.

Members of the boys club ready to play some soccer!

 

LIFE SKILLS LESSONS:

Grade 4 Learners at Ekuthuleni and Zwakele are all busy with the assignments set by the life skills team.

At Zwakele they are busy with a project on their family.  They have to talk about who is in their family, what they do for fun, what occasions they celebrate together, what religion they are and what they love about their family.  We are looking forward to seeing what the children produce.

At Ekuthuleni, the learners are learning how to work in groups.  Each group has to decide what they are going to do together to make their school a better place.  They then have 1 week to put their plan into practice and present their “mission” on Taking Responsibility in the form of a project.  The project brief asks them to individually create a cover page, to talk about what their group did for their mission, who did what, when they did it and what they learnt from the mission.  We are excited to hear back from these projects and empower these kids to ‘be the change’ they’d like to see in their school.

STAFF TRAINING:

On the 25^th of September our youth workers attended a workshop by Soul Action on “well being.”  The focus of this will be on looking at developing a feeling of well being personally as well as for the children they work with. These workshops are beneficial for not only our staff but also the hundreds of kids they work with and impact daily.

DONATIONS:

Following on from last month’s multiple soccer events, we received an AWESOME donation of soccer boots. kits and soccer balls for our sporting enthusiasts in Amaoti. The donations were generously given to us by Vopak – the same company who organised the matches in August. These boys love playing soccer and it is an incredible way to get them involved in positive activity. They were very overjoyed with their new boots and balls – and there is no doubt that they will be put to good use!

Edusolution donated a number of textbooks and posters. Our team are in the process of liaising with the schools that we work with to distribute valuable English, Maths and Science resources.

We’d like to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to both Vopak and Edusolution for their generous donations!

 

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

International Literacy Day 8/9/14

Our words are powerful. The potency of a written word can arm a person with the wisdom and ability to make a difference.. A literate person is empowered, strengthened and has a more hopeful future. But with approximately 860 million illiterate adults worldwide, the time is now – more than ever – to fight for every human’s right to be educated.
Today, the 8th of September is International Literacy Day – a day celebrated annually to highlight the importance of literacy in individuals, communities and societies

SO WHAT DO THE STATS SAY?:

• Globally, 1 in 5 people are the world are illiterate.
                              ↓
• Of these people, 2/3rds are females.
                              ↓
• Africa, as a whole continent, has less than a 60% literacy rate.
                              ↓
• 7.1% of South Africans are illiterate

                              BUT

Is this statistic an accurate representation of our country’s literacy rate?

Statistics at the end of 2013, displayed that in total, 92.9% of of South Africans can read and write. However, the way that literacy has been defined and measured in South Africa seems to be problematic. Just because a child is receiving an education, it does not mean that this is a GOOD education.
There is an evident issue that in an ever-evolving technological world, we tend to forget how vital it is to lay the appropriate foundations of literacy to allow ALL children the tools they need to be independent and empowered.

DOMINO IS ON THE FORE-FRONT OF CHANGE:

At the Domino Foundation we recognise how profound ONE literate individual is. We rest strongly on the fact that literacy opens up the doors to a future that is immeasurably brighter.

We make sure that well educated teachers and tutors are raised up to bring about a change and to impart a GOOD education on these learners.

Every day, we have the privilege of impacting close to one thousand through our Literacy Project that works into 3 schools in the Amaoti Township. That’s 998 minds that are being equipped to change our nation and make the right choices. 998 children that will grow up to be literate adults who will play a part in a Domino Effect that will affect an entire community.

To help, SMS the word DOMINO to 48716 to donate R10 to our Literacy Programme!

 

Want to see our Literacy programme in action here:

 

Read more from the September Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effect

Literacy Effect

Life Skills Effect

ECD Effect

Feeding Effect

Life Skills Effects 01/14 – 02/14

The aim of our Life Skills Programme is to equip learners with the knowledge to make wise life choices, as well as instilling within them a greater purpose and self-worth.

Domino Partners With RedCap:

The lack of experiential training plays a major role in the growing number of unemployed youth in our country. The Domino Foundation has teamed up with The RedCap Foundation (Mr. Price’s NPO) to combat unemployment and help matriculants get connected to the world of work.

“The JumpStart project literally aims to provide a “jump start” to young people and help them gain much needed skills to access the job market.” – RedCap Foundation.

The project provides a platform for matriculants from underprivileged communities to experience the ‘workplace’ by inviting them to spend a week at one of their stores. At the end of the week, each delegate receives a certificate as proof of their on-the-job training, detailing experience and practical skills gained. Store managers are encouraged to employ suitable delegates if and when positions become available. This project is truly a step in the right direction as it empowers young potential employees and instills within them a purpose, releasing their ability to unlock their amazing potential. At a meeting last week, a memorandum of understanding was signed between us and Redcap. We will undertake to contact 50 matriculants from in and around the Amaoti community to take part in a life skills programme which is a prerequisite before being considered eligible to take part in Jumpstart. Domino life skills youth workers are in the process of liaising with schools in the community to source CV’s of suitable candidates. The candidates will then be invited to attend a 4 weeks life skills programme. The Life Skills programme is run by a separate organization called Catalyst. Each candidate will be given an English and Maths test pre and post course. Those who achieve 60% and more will be selected to take part in the JumpStart programme.

We are very excited to see how our Life Skills students handle this opportunity and to see the fruits of our teaching on full display!

Community Involvement:

The beautiful backdrop for the birthday bash

Some of the children from our Life Skills Programme will also be attending Vivian Reddy’s 61^st birthday party on the 22^nd of February at the Moses Mabhida Stadium. This is an annual event held aimed at giving children from underprivileged schools a day of fun. The day will be filled with going down slides, playing on inflatable castles and zorb balls as well as being able to meet some of the AmaZulu football team and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

The ID book and birth certificate document issue is a vicious ongoing cycle as one may not be obtained without the other (A mother who does not have an ID book may not receive a birth certificate for her baby and that baby, without a birth certificate will be withheld from receiving an ID book later on.) With this in mind, we applaud Judy Carter for the incredible work she is doing to obtain both IDs and birth certificates for people of the Amaoti Community and the impact she is having in aiding the end of the vicious identification cycle. These last two months Judy has helped mothers who would like to send their children to school obtain ID books. The school will not accept these children as they do not have birth certificates; therefore obtaining IDs for these women is imperative. Home Affairs also now insists that the adult or child applying for their documents needs to come to the Home Affairs Office, as welSome of the learners with their shirts.l, adding difficulty to the case.

Some of the learners with their shirts.

It thrills us to announce that the third lot of shirt donations of have arrived from Holmes Brothers. An incredible 900 Boks Rugby shirts have been delivered to 4 of the schools in Amaoti, a massive thanks to Holmes Brothers for their generosity.

Read more from our January/February Domino Effects Newsletter here:

General Overview

Babies Home Effects

ECD Effects

Literacy Effects

Feeding Effects

 

ECD Effects – 11/13 – 01/14

Monthly ECD Theme:

Following on from last month, we continued with the theme of School Readiness as the children will be starting grade 1 next year. Focusing on fine motor skills development and shape identification, our crèche owners have been preparing the learners for their 1st year at pre-primary.

Community Involvement:

Children enjoying their Christmas gifts

This month started off with a HUGE celebration for the ECD programme. Izimbali crèche, build from thin prefabs, was demolished, reconstructed and built for Primrose and her learners. Read more about the incredible story here.

As the year draws to a close, we welcome the exciting Christmas parties and goodie bag donations for the children on our ECD programme. A number of individuals and companies spent time celebrating with the children at a number of creches. Santa Shoebox donated a number of presents, filled with toiletries and toys, to 10 of our crèches. Each crèche held a Christmas party towards the end of the month with sweets, cool drinks and chips and handed out their Christmas shoeboxes filled with goodies. The children and teachers thoroughly enjoyed the day as they wound down from a productive year.

Last week, all 16 crèche owners on our Afrisun Bright Start ECD programme, met together at our Domino offices to reflect on the 2013 year and complete some required paperwork. As our ECD programme is a recognised Enterprise Development contributor on the B-BBEE scorecard, we are required to ensure that certain standards are met. Each crèche owner signed affidavits to confirm the training received during the year, as well as any physical work that was carried out at their crèche. We received some positive and encouraging feedback on our effectiveness in 2013 and are looking forward to continue building this relationship next year.

We ended off the month hosting a Christmas party for each of the crèche owners and teachers on our ECD programme. It was a fantastic networking opportunity and team building event, over some hot dogs, breyani and ice creams. The day started with some praise & worship, followed by some talks by the field workers and it ended with each teacher walking away with a gift bag of goodies to say ‘Thank You’ for a fantastic year.

This years ECD #DominoEffects are below. How incredible?

2013 ECD #DominoEffects

Read more of our November Domino Effects Newsletter here:
– Monthly General Overview
– Babies Effects
– Feeding Effects
– Life Skills Effects
– ECD Effects
– Literacy Effects