February 2024 with Genesis MCC

It has been quite a challenging trying to get everything off the ground, but with the right attitude and being flexible enough to adapt to the change, the team is doing so well.

OUR AFTERNOON PROGRAMS

Our afternoon programs are still going very well. After carefully revisiting our last year’s programs and outcomes, we were able to add and restructure everything to make it work efficiently for every age group.

We have five facilitators assigned for each group. Nompilo and Karen juggle a group of 2-7 year olds which is approximately 55 children and every afternoon. They do educational games, gospel nursery rhymes and bible stories with them. Noxolo facilitates the middle age group, 8-10 year olds, with an average of 63 children daily. She focuses on gross and fine motor skills (big and small muscles movements and co-ordination), reading and bible study. Coach Sibu, David and Jermyn take on the older group of about 45 children doing life and social skills, dance, sports, discipleship, and leadership with them on different days.

The feeding programs have also been doing very well and it is still very important and impactful in the children’s lives.

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

The community has shown interest in the new courses offered.

We are looking forward to receive business from Bound for gold, Karen has managed to connect with a large company who wants to enroll their staff in the computer course. We are also looking to do photocopying and printing at an affordable price since it is one of the demands in from our community needs analysis.

Once again, we are excited to be working with the French team. One of their team members is assisting Karen with the computer course and the while others are working alongside with Nompilo on the crochet’ program.

We will also be taking 15 Wave of hope students for some basic computer lessons during the next school holidays. We are praying for even more exciting news, and we continue with our skills development programs.

OUTREACH

We are currently doing our outreach school program in two primary schools and we are looking at including one more high school. Our school programs are every Friday from 12 - 1pm rotating between the different schools.

We are focusing on God more than anything else and have life skills sessions. This time around we got to visit both Murchison Primary School and Madakane Primary school with the French team, where we performed the creation skit at both schools. It was our first time bringing visitors along to our school programs and it was so amazing to see the school children engaging with our visitors because it is just us all the time.

David proposed we introduce project Exodus in the two high schools as one of the programs we are offering, and the Sister Joans High School principal was very interested in having Exodus sessions for his students. There is also a lot of bullying present at schools and we will lean into that a little more in the coming year as well.

Unfortunately, We have had two cases of suicide in two of the schools. We have started doing outreach program at since the schools reopened for the 2024 academic year, this just confirms that these program are needed at schools. These children are facing a great deal and sometimes they feel there is no way out, introducing God into their lives while offering them a platform to engage in a conversation with them regarding everyday challenges they face is the only way to reach out to them. We plan to be more intentional about our weekly community evangelism, we haven’t been able to follow our normal schedule as it is because of all the changes.

GARDEN AND MAINTENANCE

Our centre and its garden is looking super clean, has flowers and it looks alive! We really appreciate our part-time gardener who is doing an amazing job and is also working very well with the French team. A shout out to Mthandeni who pops in every now and then, fixing our maintenance issues. We would also like to thank Jenna’s volunteers who did such a great job clearing and cleaning up the gym space. We are hoping we will be able to take out all the gym equipment that is left and start making use of that space.

FEBRUARY STATISTICS

• Afternoon programs = 165

• Feeding = 165

• Dance = 26

• Schools (Madakane Primary– 170, Murchison Primary – 305) = 475

• Skills (computer and crochet) = 15

• Social worker referrals = 7