One of the most important needs a person has is to posses a house, somewhere safe where he and his family can live. Some people build strong, well built homes on good foundations. Some people are poor and build mud houses with no foundations which collapse when heavy rains comes.
So here at Thanda we teach kids to be wise builders. How do we do it? From Monday to Thursday we have classes. The main purpose or aim of the program is skills development for kids and to make them feel empowered about their futures with the tools necessary to graduate, find employment and lift themselves from poverty.
There are two methods carried for construction: Practical and Theory. Theory is where we spend a lot of time in the classroom with three different subjects: building drawing, building mathematics, and building theory. For Practical, there are about 4 projects each kid must do. Here we build different kinds of walls using cement {lime} sand bricks. The project must be build up to prescribed courses and then when finished there is also a certain methods used for assessments like performance task or practical test. Construction/ Agriculture is a new program this year, but now so many people are familiar with it and these construction students have potential. They all active and good listeners, and that makes lots of things happen easily. Construction has been very rare within our community. Lots of people believed that it was for old talented man only and it’s one of the heaviest job to do. But since this program has started, lots of kids have been very interested.
In Term 3 and 4 the Construction/ Agriculture Program will build a home for a family who lost their home in the floods last year. We will also start learning about Agriculture, using the same methods as the Thanda Home Vegetable Garden Project.
Within the programme we only not teach building but we also address students about lots of issues facing our community. Issues like HIV/AIDS, healthy life styles, rights and responsibilities, and the importance of education. We also focus on crime and drugs abuse, which lead to many mistakes. Finally, we talk to the children about teenage pregnancy. When we are dealing with all these issues, we try by all means to be most part of the solutions.
- Mbongeleni [Construction/ Agriculture Teacher]
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