The creative workshops started in 2012 as a community based initiative in Stanford at Jenny October’s home with the support of DK projects, Rotary and the Stanford community. The underlying idea of the workshops is to create a safe space and offer extra mural activities to children who have little access to vocational and arts programmes.
In 2018, we were running workshops on a weekly basis in Stanford as well as in Masakhane. We are operating in both locations currently from the community hall. The range of activities we offer in the workshops are games, puzzles, arts and craft, movement and outings for small groups.
In Stanford, we have 2 dedicated facilitators who make up the team for the workshops. They are Tuliswa Mandoyi and Rachel van Rooyen. In Masakhane, we have Bulelwa Desemela and Nombulelo Mpayipheli facilitating the creative sessions. The workshops are open for all children from 6 to 13 years to attend. We keep the numbers for each group at a max. of 20 participants and we send regular informative pamphlets to the parents . The concept of the workshops is simple yet effective. We are offering stimulating activities to keep children positively occupied and engaged. The workshops are aiming to be a preventative measure in order to keep children safe and expose them to a wide range of experiences ad activities to build their skills.
In order to grow the workshops and the facilitators, we are sending the whole team in 2019 to attend an art training course, with the aim to give valuable tools to our community based facilitation team and build their confidence and skills. This program has lots of scope to grow and we are looking forward to a creative, colourful and fun filled year. The sky is the limit in terms of the activity offers we want to give to the children, so let’s fly high.
