Our Path out of Poverty Programme, which has just celebrated its 14^th anniversary, had yet another bumper year full of big wins and major achievements. Under the leadership of Ingrid Lestrade the programme continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Some of our 2011 highlights include: the opening of POP 3 in Riebeek Kasteel, which after 8 months is thriving and is often filled with the sound of children laughing and singing.  Our first POP Cup was awarded, thanks to a generous donation by Bill and Suzette Griffiths, this Cup will be awarded annually to the best POP sports person. At the invitation of Mayor Lottering our POP team embarked on two emotional but rewarding trips to Prince Albert. Annie and Ingrid visited the Karoo town in September and then a team of 13 POP staff spent a week in the small Karoo town doing a community enumeration. This involved the team visiting every home by day and running programmes for the youth at night. Discussions around a future partnership will continue in 2012.

The major win of 2011 was seeing the foundations being laid for our POP Youth Centre. For the past 14 years our POP work has been spread across the farm, but by May 2012 we will have one functioning centre for all of our POP needs. In addition the centre will also be housing our new Goedgedacht Leadership College, so watch this space for further developments as we embark on this new and exciting POP journey.

I was on my way to a meeting in a little town called Citrusdal this morning and I was the first person to arrive on a terrible accident scene. I piece of road repair machinery had hit a truck full of farm workers and there were bodies all over the road. It was a terrible scene and very scary.
I was reminded of how important our bus is in the transport of children and how grateful I am for your help and support in helping us get a bus. Thank you for making this possible and ensuring that all our children arrive and go home safely every day.
Ingrid Lestrade.

We wanted to remind all our supporters that our children come from the Swartland and that we are the bread basket of the Western Cape by taking photos of our children in the nearby corn fields.

The Bazaar we had to raise funds to send Jan Nero (he blind man in the green tracksuit) to the Paralympics in London 2012.

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If you want to contribute, please feel free to contact us!

It was with great excitement that we watched the land next to our pre-school being levelled for the building of our first Rural POP Youth Leadership Training Centre.  It has been a long process to get to this point, but finally we are seeing one of our long term dreams for the POP programme come to life. The centre will be completed in 2012 and will aim to build rural youth capacity across South Africa. As a central hub for young people from every rural community in South Africa, the POP Youth Leadership Training Centre will offer training in olive farming, hospitality and computer training amongst other things. A huge thank you to everyone who has helped us to achieve this dream.

The number of rural children whom we are supporting on their Path out of Poverty has increased rapidly over the last year and I am sure that makes some of you feel overwhelmed by it AND worried that we might loose the depthness of the programme. I would not blame you because that is what we have seen happen to so many good programmes the moment it gets replicated.

Rest assured, we are moving forward in our vision to build 10 RURAL POP YOUTH CENTRES in 10 RURAL COMMUNITIES to include 10 000 RURAL CHILDREN on our programme over the next 5 years but we need your help.

During the past three weeks of school holiday programmes we have noticed so many children who lacked so many basic essentials like a bath, clean and warm clothes, food, a hug, encouragement, care, safety, education, fun, sport facilitaties and activities and shoes.

We have noticed that a 7-year old boy had the framework of shoes but no heels/soles underneath them and another one with one broken shoe on one foot and the other shoe in his hand because it had holes all over. One of our teenagers could not attend our last evening with all the youth leaders because he had to help his mother and younger sister find a home to live because they have been asked to leave the two-bedroom house that they have shared with three other families on one of the farms. We have managed to get shoes for both boys and the teenager has received a small stipend for his work as a youth leader that he could use to offer as rent money so that him and his family can have a roof over their heads and him and his sister can continue to go to school which is starting tomorrow.

In order to respond to these basic needs in such a way that it strengthens and support the children and youth for a very long time we are desperate for your help by SPONSORING A CHILD ON A MONTHLY BASIS for a period of time. It does take 20 – 25 years to get one child out of poverty and I am a living example of it. POP has supported me for 8 years to obtain a law degree and today I can safely say that I will never be as poor as I was after I was born!

Think about it and if you are touched by the happy faces whom you have seen the last few weeks please visit SPONSOR A CHILD on our website. Although the numbers are increasing rapidly, POP is still trying its utmost best to keep the depthness of the programme alive despite the quantities and that is why we need your help.

Thank you in advance.
Ingrid Lestrade
Development Coordinator

The Path out of Poverty (POP) programme is very long term and sadly there seem to be no short cuts. One project, no matter how good will not get a child out of poverty – so it’s a matter of starting from beginning with vulnerable babies – giving them as many years prior to school as possible – supporting them through school and seeing that they stay there – this means, clothes, rainwear, shoes, school fees, stationery, toiletries (you’d be amazed how many teenagers fall out of school because they get bullied about how they “smell” – from wood fires, and girls who don’t have pads etc fall out too) – homework supervision in an after-school situation where they can get a hot meal a day, shower, – then they need to get involved in a youth programme which keeps an eye on good health and does a lot of personal development (good values, good manners, good clean fun ,sport, horizon broadening, exposure to other cultures, religions etc) – move on to a servant leadership programme where they give back to their own communities and learn how to run projects in the community – preparation for work and finally work ….preparation for parenthood – and the circle is complete. Sounds simple but to get this kind of long term intervention up and running takes some stamina.

Building rural leadship has been one of our big challenges as we employ 90% from the local community so lots of the staff have the same problems as the target group ie. FAS, developmental deficits and pretty damaged and abusive childhoods. We have however been going long enough now to be able now to observe the second generation of POP children, born to POP graduates and you cannot believe how different they are – larger, brighter, emotionally stronger having been nurtured properly by mothers who did not drink during their pregnancy.

We are in a relationship with the University of Ottawa who have promised us ten years of on-going evaluation and when they were here in January we discovered to our amazement that our programme, which we just built up on an instinctive feel about what children needed, almost entirely mirrors the CBR (Community Based Rehabilition) matrix prepared over 12 years by WHO and now accepted by them and the ILO and UNESCO. So we felt rather chuffed. Getting this kind of thing off the ground is tough going and requires a lot of fundraising expertise and is not without major challenges – in our case the totally un co-operative farmers – but it does work that makes us feel happy to try and spread the word. Goedgedacht farm is the ‘Mother project’ but we are now running POP centres in Riebeek Kasteel and Riebeek West and programmes in Paar, Elandskloof and Algeria.

Ingrid Lestrade
Development Coordinator

Johannes is the son of Maria and Jimmy. Both of whom are Hiv positive. But they are careful and caring parents and are keen that their children do not get infected by them. They have been taking their medicine daily and when Maria fell pregnant the biggest question in their mind was “Will the baby be born Hiv Positive?” To their delight and our relief the baby was born strong and healthy and Hiv negative. How do you measure success in this life? A difficult question but here is an example of a successful outcome to a very difficult situation.

We invite you to comment on this story and/or share your thoughts on how to measure success in life?