In the dry areas of the townships, Calabash Trust felt it was important that children were able to have green fields and other sporting facilities in order to develop children holistically.
Sport is part of education, teaching valuable life skills, thus our Grassroots Project works in conjunction with Calabash Trust UK, where pupils from Reeds and LVS College in the UK come to South Africa to start the foundations of sports fields and other facilities at our cluster schools. They have worked closely with the pupils of the school and have been visiting us annually since 2005. To date they have helped build four soccer fields, cricket nets, a netball court, two libraries and a food garden. This allows township schools to become more attractive to parents and children within the community.
LVS and Reeds College from the UK completed their annual 2010 visit in July and left two of our schools in a much improved condition. Vusumzi High Primary School in Addo now has the foundation for a very good sports field thanks to the hard work of LVS College. Cacadu Municipality helped immensely with their sponsorship of a netball kit, netball poles, netball and soccer balls, as well as supplying lunch for the duration of LVS College's visit.
A classroom at Henry Nginza Primary School in Njoli was converted into a beautiful library. All materials and hard labour was sponsored by NMC, with Reeds College doing the painting and final touches.
Many parties were involved in the food garden at Henry Nginza. The salt content of the soil in the area is extremely high, therefore Reeds College built food boxes to plant in. Shukuma Flooring Systems sponsored 10 cement slabs for food boxes; NMC sponsored bricks, cement and labour to build these boxes; P&P Plastics sponsored a large amount of plastic sheeting for the bottom of 6 other food boxes where tyres were used as support; 40 cubes of soil and compost were sponsored by Instant Lawns; 2 water tanks were sponsored by Jo Jo tanks, huge discount was given by Marley Pipe Systems for guttering for rainwater collection; Oshry Farms and Moorland Seedlings sponsored over 2000 seedlings; Marina Landscaping sponsored 16 trees. Thank you to everybody involved, and a special thank you to WSP and Marina Landscaping who helped in facilitating the process through their consultation and contacts, as well as to NMC for a job well done.
We look forward to seeing you again in 2011 LVS and Reeds College!
