It is a very exciting time for the team of volunteers and staff on site- lots of creativity, enthusiasm, and hard work! We now have 235 students enrolled in the Thanda After-School Project and an additional 100-150 that come each day to join the open soccer program. Everyday after school, each student in the program receives a meal, followed by 2 hours of homework/academic time or 2 hours of a designated activity (Soccer, Basketball, Art, Netball, Youth Education, or Computers) before returning home in the community or the children’s home.

So far, the response from the local community and the students has been overwhelmingly positive- the teachers have noticed an improvement in our students’ learning and the elders sent a message recently to thank us for teaching the children respect. All the students in our new Focus on Matric program wrote a letter of thanks to the Thanda team promising to work hard and not let us down. We are already seeing a lot of positive changes in the way our students react to learning and the choices they make. As one of our employees said, “my dream is for Thanda to stay in this community forever and for everyone to know that it was Thanda that helped them.”

We have 13 local staff and 12 volunteers whose continuous energy and hard work makes Thanda After-School possible! The staff and volunteers work together to combine knowledge of the local community with resources for teaching. The office is always buzzing with activity, music, singing, sporadic dancing and a lot of laughing!

Thanda ASP recently started a Community Involvement and Assistance program to extend our resources to the families and households of our students. Each Thanda teacher has a small group of students so they are able to get to know the child well and then investigate problems at home. We have begun this process with students in the Youth Education Program and are starting with the high school students this term. The information we have gathered so far is startling- malnutrition, unemployment, and disease are a large part of life for most of the families involved. We hope to expand this program as soon as it becomes possible.

The Teacher Resource Center, home to a developing library of textbooks, reference books, and study guides, finally received shelving and opened last month. The library provides Thanda teachers, as well as teachers from the local community, with resources that are currently lacking in their classrooms.

Thanda is preparing to start business and entrepreneurship training within each activity in the third term, with the hope that the graduating students will start their own enterprises in their community. The fourth term will be spent researching post-high school employment with each graduating student. Thanda ASP will continue to research opportunities for opening an agriculture, construction, and carpentry program in the future. For now, we are very pleased with the progress we have made in just 4 months!