A drop-In centre and comprehensive community-based aftercare programme has been set up at the local iKwezi Lokusa Primary School to care for affected children and provide the necessary therapeutic intervention. This team is working with children that are most affected by trauma related to broken homes and other social challenges.
The children are collected from their schools, served a nutritious cooked meal and assisted with homework before taken home in the late afternoons. In addition to this, literacy and numeracy programmes are run to help keep these vulnerable young learners on par with their school peers.
Children receive therapeutic intervention and counselling in order to begin the process of healing and restoration from their difficult and traumatic home circumstance. Play therapy is used and this entails a variety of techniques that provide an opportunity for the child to communicate emotions, feelings, experiences and behaviour. The counsellor uses the responses in play to intervene and to heal.
“It is important to bridge the gap with children when they are young if we are going to prevent future fall out of our community’s youth. This programme not only provides a safe space and warm meal, but helps with these young children’s education and social development,” explained Livhuwani Nwachukwu, Economic Development Manager for Noupoort Wind Farm.
Think Twice spent 6 months of 2017 empowering unemployed youth in Noupoort with knowledge, skills and an honourable value system required to uplift their community. Using a scientifically proven INS model of change, young people identified challenges that children and youth face in the community of Noupoort and began initiating projects to mitigate those challenges.
They organized themselves and registered their NPO, under the name Inclusive Neigbourhood Spaces Noupoort, with the department of social development. All their activities are conducted under the hashtag #BringNoupoortBack. Think Twice in collaboration with INS Noupoort, is financially supported by Noupoort Wind Farm’s Economic Development Programme, and aims to intensify its impact on the community of Noupoort.
“We are working to address neglect and get children off the streets, whilst educating them so that they can catch up with their peers in schools,” concluded Nwachukwu.
