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South Africa Education and Environment Project

Location	Browns Farm, Phillippi, Cape Town
Field	Educare and upliftment
Director	Jane Keen
Website	www.saep.org

The network of ‘educare’ centres together cater for 880 children who range in age from a few months to 6 years. With very limited resources, these ‘educare’ centres provide:

Safe day care from 6am to 6pm
Two nutritious meals a day
Pre-school preparation and supervised play
Training and employment for 50 otherwise unemployed women

SAEP acts as a link between individuals & organisations who want to help young children, & those in need including:

Recruitment and placement of local and foreign volunteers to assist in stimulation of the children, maintenance of buildings, staff training and much more
Collection and delivery of donations of food, equipment, toys and clothing
Financial training and management
Fundraising and marketing
HIV/Aids and other training
Coaching and mentoring of principals at the centres

Four crèches form the Safety Unity Crèche Forum
The pre-schools are situated in Brown’s Farm, Philippi, a densely populated area, with many recent `refugees’ from the Eastern Cape. There are high levels of unemployment in the community, together with poverty, crime and alcoholism. Many children are unattended during the day, or left with unsuitable people, leaving them at risk of child abuse, neglect and accidents. Therefore, the crèches are an essential form of protection and supervision as well as pre-school preparation.

Qhamani Educare Centre
Principal: Nokhaya Manxiwa-Nqeza; 105 children; 6 staff members.

Qhamani Educare Centre was started in January 1996, by Nomsa (Nokhaya) Manxiwa-Nqeza. She saw the need in her community for good child care and pre-school education and decided to open a centre herself. With the assistance of the community, and her mother who donated the land, Qhamani was started with 40 children and 4 volunteers. Nokhaya is a hardworking principal with an incredible personality. She was nominated for the Woman of Worth Award in 2004, and selected as one of the finalists. She has also presented to a parliamentary sub-committee on the importance of early childhood development and appeared on national TV news in 2005 advocating for improved funding for pre-school education. She knows very well how to deal with people. At the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, the old, badly leaking and too small shack where the crèche was located was demolished and a new, double story face brick building could be built through the amazing support of national and international donors.

Zamukhanyo Educare Centre
Principal: Nobuntu Mkhencele (Sindiswa Tebeka); 126 children; 5 staff members.

Nobuntu has a vibrant personality and a way of making people feel welcome. She and her children like to sing and play musical instruments (which they are very good at!). The centre was founded in 1997, starting off in a small shack. Now, they have a new ‘Polystyrene’ building which was constructed by a group of Dutch volunteers in 2007. It consists of two very large classrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom with 5 toilets. This new building replaces the small, old, wooden and iron structure and gives Nobuntu and her staff the basis to become a real educare centre for their 120 children.

Thandolwethu Educare
Principal: Constance Cawekazi Ndzelwane; 11 children; 1 staff member.

Thandolwethu Educare Centre is a crèche in the Philippi community which was only recently established by Constance Cawekazi Ndzelwane on the 3rd of September 2007. Constance joined SAEP and the Safety Unity Crèche Forum thereafter. She looks forward to employing more staff members to assist her, especially when she can enroll more children. The crèche does not receive any form of funding or support other than through SAEP at the moment and it financially depends on the school fees paid by the parents. The current crèche building consists of one small classroom next to the principal’s house.

As Thandolwethu has only recently started off, there is still a long way to go for them. SAEP tries to help Constance in providing adequate child care and education through collecting donations, sending volunteers and working very closely with her on her goals.

Kiddies Educare Centre
Principal: Margaret Makhafola; 40 children; 3 staff members.

Kiddies Educare has been in existence since 2001.
SAEP was approached at the end of 2007 by one of their gap year students who lives next door to the crèche and who saw that Kiddies Educare need further support. The crèche is built on the grounds of the principal’s home. The structure is very basic and in need of a lot of renovation and maintenance, as well as extension. It is very small for the number of children, and even if it is extended, the extra space available around the building will still only be big enough to accommodate 40 children on the basis of the Dept of Social Services standards.

Even with such limited resources, Margaret and her teachers provide a loving, caring and encouraging learning environment for their children and Margaret’s creativity has already helped her to face many challenges.

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A child miseducated is a child lost.
John F. Kennedy

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South Africa Education and Environment Project

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