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Children's Resource Centre (CRC)
Address: 3 Milner Road, Rondebosch 7700, or PO Box 1187, Woodstock 7915
Tel: +27 21 686 6898+Fax 27 21 686 6901
E-mail: crcchild@iafrica.com
Website: www.childrensmovement.org.za
Contact Names: Maureen Meder and Marcus Solomon
The following submitted report has been slightly shortened from the original but also includes some additional information as a result of a visit by Hugh Hawes to Capetown in 2003. The organisers report:
Organisation
We began our activities in April 1983. They are implemented through community-based children's groups which are affiliated to the CRC. These children's groups have collectively come to call themselves the Children's Movement. The Child-to-Child programme is implemented as part of the broad thrust of the CRC. It aims to help children between the ages of 7 and 14 years of age to organise and help themselves so as to improve the quality of their lives. The CRC believes that children are potential agents for change. Funding is provided by various partner organisations in different countries. More recently the CRC has obtained funding from within South Africa. We collaborate with partner organisations. They help CRC with the education and training of its members.
We work in both urban and rural contexts, almost exclusively in the poorest sections of disadvantaged communities and in the informal housing sector (so-called squatter areas). The CRC and the Children's Movement are membershiporganisations. About 50 adult volunteers serve as adult coordinators (broadly speaking, community development workers) of the groups. The CRC has set up and helped to sustain Child-to-Child health centres in approximately 40 primary schools. Through these centres, the organisation works with another 2,500 to 3,000 learners from these schools who serve as Child-to-Child health practitioners. These practitioners in turn serve approximately 40,000 learners. Children aged between 7 and 14 years are the target group and include both boys and girls. However, girls constitute the majority. Any child in the community, or in the schools where the organisation is active, is allowed to join. No discrimination of any kind is allowed.
Main Purpose of the Child-to-Child Activities
The main purpose of our Child-to-Child activities, as with all the other activities and programmes within the organisation, is to strengthen the Children's Movement as a whole; to provide the membership with the necessary
motivation and incentive to become actively involved in improving their own lives, and also that of other children; and to provide the membership with the understanding and skills to make all this possible. The organisation places a great deal of emphasis on gender issues and a number of organisational guidelines serve to ensure that both boys and girls represent and serve the organisation on equal terms and in equal numbers. Our organisation also has an ongoing girl child campaign, aimed at drawing attention to the problems and difficulties girls experience. We are also keen to promote children's rights and this is one of our major objectives. However, there is also much emphasis on the responsibilities children have towards their families and communities. The lesson we like to teach is that rights and responsibilities go together.
Activities are introduced to child members through the community-based Children's Groups. They are also introduced to learners at the schools where the Child-to-Child health centres are situated. Child-to-Child health centres are classrooms which have been transformed into Child-to-Child health centres. Children take a major part in setting up, organising and running health centres. The centres promote hygiene and first aid but also develop skills in communication and behaviour with a view to reducing conflict, etc.
Some health centres are now developing small resource centres, some promote and maintain vegetable gardens and some serve as ‘club houses’ for local Child-to-Child groups. One primary school centre visited organised a ‘sleepover’ (aptly locally named a ‘stayawake’) supervised by parent volunteers.
School-based Child-to-Child Activities
40 primary schools are involved nationally, with about 5 schools in the Western Cape. The numbers are constantly increasing. The work in the high schools has also started and is growing. The content of the high schools programme is presently focused on HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, STDs and drug abuse. With time, we hope to develop and implement a more pro-active programme with 'living healthily' as the main theme. Our long-term goal is to have a Child-to-Child health centre in every school, thus our slogan: 'every school a health centre; and every child a health activist'.
Health and Education Working Together
They work together in a very limited sense in our organisation. Health workers bring the specialist knowledge that we do not have. However, we do sometimes find that they have a particular mind-set about children and non-professionals which on occasion, can make it difficult for us to work with them.
Monitoring and Evaluation of Activities
Centres are regularly visited by organisers who have developed a simple checklist and share findings with children and teachers. As a result children better understand the need for cleanliness and are showing much better behaviour towards other children and learners. Their practical involvement inthe programme has also built confidence and their general outward appearance has improved. Communities and parents are very pleased with the impact the programme has had on those who participate. (It has to be remembered that the Child-to-Child programme takes place within the context of the Children's Movement, which has developed and implements an integrated programme including culture, environment, health, media, campaigns around the girl child, and anti-bullying campaigns, etc.) Schools participating in the programme have been extremely pleased by this new development within their schools.
Training
The main focus of our training programmes is the children in the community-based children's groups and the health teams in the schools. We also train volunteer adult coordinators who are members of the organisation. The content of our training programmes seeks to promote deeper understanding of the nature of Child-to-Child, why we as a social movement of children have adopted it, and what we hope to achieve with it. Our training includes Child-to-Child methodology; role play; translation from one language to another (important as 2 or 3 languages are spoken amongst participants); and participatory methods that use the knowledge and skills of the participants.
Use, Adaptation, Translation and Production of Child-to-Child Materials
Over the years, we have used various publications produced by the Child-to-Child Trust, including the 2 Child-to-Child resource books. We have developed a brochure and manual to serve as a guide for those implementing our Child-to-Child programmes in schools. We have also translated one Child-to-Child storybook into Xhosa, one of the main local languages.
Child-to-Child materials are now held in all resource centres and the CRC seeks to build up their availability.
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