History

A SHORT, SHORT HISTORY OF POP THE PATH OUT OF POVERTY PROGRAMME..

In the early 1990’s in the deep dark days of apartheid in South Africa a community resource centre was started on a beautiful old Cape Dutch farm called Goedgedacht situated in the foothills of the Kasteelberg mountain range about 90km north of Cape Town.

The farms in the Riebeeksrivier valley were amongst the first to be allocated in 1704 to what were called the “Free Burgers” – men from Jan Van Riebeek’s Dutch garrison/ship refreshment station – who did not wish to return to Holland and demanded to be allowed to settle at the Cape. They started to farm and over the years the area became known for wheat, tobacco and grapes for the wine industry. More recently all the tobacco has disappeared making way for the farming of soft fruits, and citrus and as in the case of Goedgedacht farm, olive groves.

Apart from the settlers from Europe the indigenous population was made up mainly of the San hunters and Khoe pastoralists – who came into conflict with the Dutch farmers who were claiming their traditional lands. The conflict was great but they were no match for guns and gradually they were killed or overpowered and the remnant settled on farms as slaves, later to mix with slave labourers imported from the East as well as Xhosa speaking people from the Eastern Cape and of course there was a fair degree of mixing with the European settlers.

The farm workers of this area are mainly ‘ people known to genetic scientists as ‘Cape Mixed Ancestry’ who live mainly in the Western Cape (once classified ‘Coloured’ under apartheid’s Population Registration Act”). Interestingly this group of people shows the highest levels of intercontinental admixture of any populations in the world. The genetic evidence shows that 25% of their ancestry can be traced to southern African Khoesan, 20% to India, 19% to the Niger-Kordofanian language groups and 19% to Europe.”
Sarah Tishkoff et al ‘The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African American. 2009

The lives of farm workers in this area have been defined by acute insecurity and poverty for many generations with lives further destroyed by alcohol as the result of what was called the ‘dop system’ where farm workers were paid part of their wage in wine. This iniquitous practice was banned by the new government in 1994 but the results of generations of alcohol abuse and poverty have resulted in this area having the highest rate of children born with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in the world.

Being social workers with experience in ECD (Early Childhood Education) we were concerned by the fact that children from the valley were not getting an education.
A local farm school offered 5 years of primary school education and it appeared that almost 95% of them dropped out at some stage in the first five years and only a tiny handful going on to high school. It was the experience of the teachers that the children were unprepared for school and generally failed each year, by which time they were old enough to go back to the farms and work.

With South Africa’s liberation in 1994 came new legislation aimed improving the lives of farm workers. The ‘dop system’ was outlawed and child labour prohibited until they were 16 years old. Compulsory primary school education was introduced and a minimum wage for farm workers determined.

The situation in the 1990s was that school drop-outs went back to the farms where they were now not allowed to work, they became bored, kicked the dust and the stage was then set for the early onset of drinking and it was common for girls to become pregnant in their early teens. The result was yet another generation of babies born with a range of developmental deficits caused by alcohol, maternal malnutrition and raised by young illiterate mothers without parenting skills.

Much research has been done in SA around FAS and its effect on children, families and the broader community. Fine research emerged from Professor Denis Viljoen of the Department of Genetics at University of Cape Town and its Institute of Alcohol and Related Studies, but it appeared to us that there appeared to be little or no information as to how to tackle the problem outside of a medical model. Clearly pregnant mothers needed to be persuaded not to drink but conditions on farms being as they were, and with women living in repressive, paternalistic communities were every day was a struggle for survival and where alcohol was the only form of relief, were unlikely to be capable of making changes to their drinking behaviour without simultaneous major changes to their economic and social conditions.

And so was born the Path out of Poverty Programme (POP) for the children of farm workers and their families. In October 1998 we scooped up all the pre-schoolers we could find on farms and admitted 24 four children to our newly built pre-school. By year end the school psychologist’s tests showed that the children who were chronologically 6 were in fact between two and three years behind.
They were not nearly school ready.

At the same time we started a youth group for teenagers. They were abusive, violent
almost totally non-communicative and generally most difficult and quite out of control.

The information confirming the developmental delay in the children was what defined the way the POP programme developed further. Our completely unproven hypothesis was that if children born with multiple developmental deficits including FAS were able to follow an integrated and holistic development programme which included early ECD intervention and a special kind of support, they could go to school, stay in school and become happy, healthy and contributing adults in their community. Well it was a nice idea ! In 1998 we had no idea of how we would prove this.

The POP programme is now nearly 12 years old. (see elsewhere for THE MODEL AND HOW IT WORKS). At this time in early 2010 we look back with amazement at the seriously damaged little ones who started in the pre-school in 1998 and who are now bright eyed, healthy and happy children attending high school and as well the difficult group of teenagers who now, along with others who joined on the way, are now twenty somethings working and being useful members of society.

Of course the ‘Path out of Poverty’ has not always been an easy one but there are some highlights worth mentioning. The admission age has been lowered and farm worker’s children can now take their first step onto the “Path” and enter the baby unit as early as 4 months old.. The original pre-school is now more like a therapeutic unit where special attention is given to the needs of children who have had a rocky start in life.

The core value of the POP programme has been to keep children in school, no matter the cost. So, children are given what they need to achieve this – stationery, school uniforms, shoes, rainwear for winter. Teenagers who are most vulnerable to dropping out of school often for simple but embarrassing reasons like not having toiletries are provided with these.

An after-school project provides homework supervision, a hot meal, a place to shower, a library and access to computers, sexual health counselling, sport …and lots of hugs.

All of this work, is underpinned by an exceptional weekly youth programme pioneered by Ingrid Lestrade who joined the organisation in 2000 and has spear-headed the development of the POP programme.

The POP programme has four major threads running through all the 17 projects which make the ‘Path’ – these being HEALTH, EDUCATION, CARE FOR THE PLANET AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT the last two are particularly made present in the work of the youth programme where leadership skills and work preparedness get emphasised. POP beneficiaries are required to be part of the youth group and we have been hugely encouraged to see the loyalty with which some of the older youth continue to turn up each week keen to learn more and put it into action in their lives.

There has been a strong emphasis on developing leadership, developing a rural voice, leadership in sport and particularly ‘servant leadership’ where young people learn to give back to others even less fortunate than themselves.. Holiday programmes which take place four times a year are opportunities for volunteering, for exchanges between our youngsters and young people from schools overseas , for trips out of the area to broaden horizons.

So before we move on to talk about the future, what have been the gains? Children who in the 1990s dropped out of school after 3 or 4 years of education are starting formal schooling with 3 or 4 years of preparation behind them and are staying in school until they reach their full potential when they are then directed into further education such as learnerships, colleges or work placements in the rural areas nearby.

There has been a remarkable drop in early teenage pregnancies. The young women who have had babies have had them in their twenties when they are able to nurture them properly and know not to drink. All our POP graduates are working – even now in a time of recession and high unemployment particularly in rural areas.

Do we have a development model which is successful enough to replicate in other places where similar poverty situations exist and where children are growing up with no hope for the future? We think so, and we’re ready to give it a try.

So how does the future look ? This bit we’ll be updating constantly for you ……

In 2009 thanks to generous donors and the organisation Help the Rural Child we built the second POP youth centre at Esterhof/Riebeek Kasteel and in 2010 we start building yet another centre in Riebeek West. Edlyne van der Westhuizen a POP junior manager takes over here as Centre Manager.

Ingrid Lestrade who has been with us since almost the very beginning is moves to run the POP expansion programme and Jeremy Maarman is now Co-ordinator of the Goedgedacht POP programme with a team of 17 staff.

Have we proved our hypothesis? We think so. We have shown that with the right kind of nurturing children born into situations of extreme poverty, with multiple difficulties can dream of a better future, and achieve it.

This is an expensive programme, we would not have achieved such promising results without the help of an army of generous funders, donors, amazing volunteers, many friends ..and a lot of prayers. We believe the results are good enough to justify the expense which just has to be far less expensive than the cost of the human carnage caused by poverty, FAS, alcoholism, abuse, unemployment to our economy, our community life, and to our country.

Anne Templeton
Social Worker

This is Maria – her mother is a farm worker who had no education. Maria joined the POP programme in her early teens. She was helped to stay in school even though her mother was desperately poor and had no support. She passed her Matric except for one subject. She got selected to attend Elsenburg College on an Agricultural Learnership and achieved her diploma in two years. She needed to get that one last subject… so she’s been working as a farm worker and studying part-time. This December she heard that she had passed her last subject. Next year she will start a degree in Agriculture! She is still a youth leader in the POP garden, she has her own food garden and supports her Mum who is a Safe House mother. She’s a model member of her community making a real contribution to our country.