Vision & Growth

2008 was the 10th anniversary of the Path out of Poverty Programme. During that time nearly 2000 children have had their lives touched by the programme.

There have been some notable successes.  Whereas 95% of children dropped out of school by the fifth year of education when we started, we now keep children in school until they reach their highest potential. We have had 11 of our young people pass their Matric Examination (Grade 12), there has been a 5% drop out of children on the programme. The second area where we have seen a profound change has been by almost totally eliminating early teenage pregnancies which were very common before we started with POP.

Encouraged by these results we have embarked upon an expansion plan for POP youth centres.

After ten years of work on the POP programme for rural youth the Goedgedacht Trustees have approved an expansion plan which will work to replicate certain aspects of the POP model programme in other areas where similar situations of rural poverty exist.

Our vision for the next ten years is 10 000 rural children helped onto the Path out of Poverty from ten rural POP centres.

At present we have the following areas in our sights:

• Goedgedacht Farm. (The mother-house of the POP programme)
• Riebeek Kasteel. Esterhof. – The first POP youth centre of the Goedgedacht outreach programme has been built and opened in September 2009.
• Riebeek West.  The land for this centre has been identified and is in the process of being purchased. The cost of the centre has been found and we are hoping to have this youth centre up by September 2010.
• Elandskloof. Cedarberg. Enumeration completed. Lease on an office being negotiated with the community.
• We are working with the youth in the small town of Algeria in the Cedarburg mountains.