Clint in South Africa With Grassroot Soccer: Creating an Culture of Learning

In mid-March my tenure with Grassroot Soccer ended, and I began working full time at Thembelenkosini Care Givers (TCG). Many of you who follow this blog will remember Thembelenkosini as the children’s community center in Senaoane, Soweto where AJ and I built the library a few months ago. Since then, we had continued to work part-time at TCG whenever time allowed, assisting the founder and director of the organization, Khosi, with any projects she needed our help with. It quickly became a place we grew extremely fond of and we felt ourselves establishing real, meaningful relationships with many of the kids at the center.

With my time at GRS ending, I knew that I wasn’t ready to leave Soweto and began thinking of ways to supplement the experience I had while working for Grassroot. I didn’t have to look very far. After just one conversation with Khosi, she agreed that I should spend my last 5 weeks in South Africa working for Thembelenkosini and living with her and her family in Senaoane.

So, for the past 5 weeks I have been working with Khosi to restructure, redesign, and renovate how her afterschool program works and how we can more effectively fulfill our mission to physically, emotionally, creatively, and intellectually enhance the lives of children in the community of Senaoane. I’ve worked with Khosi in helping her understand the nuances what foundations and private donors are looking for before agreeing to donate money to an organization, the importance of establishing partnerships with other NGOs and businesses throughout the community, developing a strategic plan for where she sees TCG going and how she’s going to get there, designing the website, and creating an arts & crafts program to supplement the educational and nutrition program, and much more. It has undoubtedly been a great learning experience for both of us.

After spending just a few days at the center however, I realized that while the center was not necessarily in bad shape physically, it did not provide the kids with the type of environment that was conducive to learning. I thought back to all of my elementary school classrooms and how they were filled with bright colors, big posters, inspirational quotes & poems, maps, and all types of other things that put us into the spirit of learning. Those things did not yet exist here. Khosi and I both thought that for the TCG to take a true step in the direction of being a place of educational enhancement, it was important for us to create an environment that would stimulate the kids’ levels of intellectual curiosity.

So, after the go-ahead from Khosi, as well as some cash in my pocket from performing at the Maun International Poetry Festival, I set out to physically renovate the inside of Thembelenkosini.

By no means do I consider myself a visually artistic person. Slam poetry is one thing, but to have my creative visions manifest themselves through a paintbrush was a whole new ballgame…a very messy ballgame. So after a week of going through dozens of rolls of tape, having enamel paint trapped in the crevices of my fingernails, misspelling Thembelenkosini on the wall and having to start over, basically showering myself in paint thinner, helping the kids put their hand prints all over the wall, and making the owner of the local paint store really happy with this new surge of business, I completed the renovation of TCG.

It’s an awesome feeling to step into a room and experience how a simple paintjob can so drastically change the atmosphere of a place. Additionally, I believe that allowing the kids to play a role in the renovation (they came up with the idea for all of the handprints and decided on the words to be painted along the wall) really gives them a sense of ownership in the center that I’m not sure existed before.

We’ve already noticed a difference in the kids’ attitudes when they are here as well as their desire to go into the library and pick up a book without anyone telling them to.

I leave in just a few days, but living in Soweto and working at TCG has enhanced my experience here in South Africa 100-fold. As I begin to transition into Teach for America in a few months, I know that because of my time with both Grassroot Soccer and Thembelenkosini Care Givers. I will be a better teacher next year than I otherwise would have been.