Munsieville students visit Caxton Magazines

Students from The Thoughtful Path’s 'Youth Voice Journalism Academy' in Munsieville spent a day at Caxton Magazines recently at the start of their latest assignment.
The team of journalists at 'Your Family' magazine gave the students some first-hand experience in magazine editing and production, including tips on how to create a professional layout. After a day of presentations and in-depth discussions with the journalists, the students went away put their own draft magazine together.
Women's magazine, men’s magazine, Sports, Beauty, Entertainment... which title would they choose to work on and put to print? The students went back to Caxton Magazines a couple of weeks later to have their work edited, and got some really positive feedback from the Your Family team.
Well done to the students for their efforts – look forward to the next good news story from Munsieville!

Green shoots of hope in Munsieville

This week saw another community clean-up in the area of Munsieville known as 'Little Mshengoville', a collection of shacks clinging to a steep hillside. Until recently, the community rubbish dump, surrounded by the shacks in which children are living, was overflowing with stinking garbage. Not only was this unpleasant to look at and to smell, it was also a threat to the solitary water stand pipe serving the whole area, home to several hundred people. Now, thanks to the efforts of the community and the local council, the area has been cleaned up and the community will be able to enjoy a safe, clean water supply.

In another way to improve the environment and tackle hunger and poverty, The Thoughtful Path has recently shown the first group of community leaders how to build keyhole vegetable gardens. These will help to' green' up Munsieville and more importantly to provide food for children and an income for families if surplus produce can be sold locally. More training sessions are planned for the coming weeks to spread the word and provide the community with a way to feed and support themselves.

Young people of Munsieville addressed at launch of “one job per needy household” programme

The Gauteng National Youth Development Agency (Nyda) chairman, Simon Molefe, recently took young people to task at the Munsieville Sports Complex for engaging in improper activities as a way to overcome their problems. In a strongly-worded speech aimed at curtailing young people’s immoral acts, Molefe did not mince his words as he stated that young people cannot be actively involved in the National Youth Services (NYS) programme if they continue to produce babies.

Molefe was addressing young people at the launch of the “one job per needy household” programme, which is part of the Gauteng government’s effort aimed at mitigating poverty, unemployment and joblessness caused by economic depression.

He urged young people to take their education seriously and for those who are working as interns in government departments to make use of the Internet to empower themselves with necessary skills. Molefe said the Nyda will strive to make sure that young people become entrepreneurs and not “tenderpreneurs”. It is aimed at enhancing the participation of young people in the economy, through targeted and integrated programmes, among others.

Waste management plan for Gauteng launched

Gauteng province, which includes Munsieville, is an economic hub and produces 42 per cent of South Africa’s waste! Over the years, the province has experienced various challenges relating to waste management and waste volumes, hence a waste minimisation plan and standards have been developed to ensure that the waste produced in Gauteng is dealt with appropriately.
On 13 June the launch of the waste management standards, held in Munsieville in Mogale City, introduced three documents to address the following areas:
• The Gauteng Waste Minimisation Plan
• The Gauteng Hazardous Waste Management Plan
• The Gauteng Waste Collection Standards.
The 45 existing operational landfills are under pressure from waste generated in the province. Constraints include competing needs for land, as well as opposition by residents to developing disposal sites close to their residential areas. However, proper disposal sites will create job opportunities through recycling, helping to alleviate poverty. The project aims to introduce basic standards that are uniform in all Gauteng municipalities and tackle issues such as limited refuse removal services in poor areas like Munsieville, which cause health hazards.

Raising awareness of child protection in Munsieville

Candice Wallace is currently working with Project HOPE UK as part of her Masters degree studies at Brunel University, and last week she was in Munsieville to run a series of workshops for The Thoughtful Path's child protection programme.
The workshops covered children’s rights, the issues surrounding child sexual abuse and how to raise awareness of this problem in the community.
Participants included members of the Child Protection Unit from the Thoughtful Path, who are responsible for developing abuse prevention programmes for the community. Other key players were children who have been victims of child sexual abuse themselves, as well as police officers, Social Welfare officers, teachers and nurses.
Candice used presentations, interactive sessions, role playing and videos to encourage the children to talk about their experiences and to highlight the legal, psychological and community aspects of child sexual abuse.
Project HOPE UK sees these workshops as an integral part of building effective networking in the community and for developing a sustainable community response to this widespread problem.
See our Web site for more information about the Thoughtful Path programme and find out how you can support our work in Munsieville.

Dr John Howe, CEO of Project HOPE, visits Munsieville

Dr John Howe, CEO and President of Project HOPE US, visited Munsieville recently. Here is his report from his trip, where he saw the difference that Project HOPE UK's Thoughtful Path programme is already making to the lives of the children there.

"...we shall be as a city upon a hill -- the eyes of the people are upon us."

President-elect John F. Kennedy, January 8, 1961

I was reminded of these words, as we drove west from Johannesburg. My destination of Munsieville, a city of 39,000, sits high on a hill, overlooking the plains of the Rand District. The health of Munsieville is at risk both economically and medically. The nearby gold mines have shut down, resulting in 70% unemployment. 10,000 people live in corrugated tin shacks. Two clinics and two ambulances serve the entire city, without a hospital.

Yet as I visited with community elders I was most impressed with their sense of optimism. This was partly due to a sense of hope created by “The Thoughtful Path” programme, designed and carried out to "give orphans and vulnerable children the opportunity to develop into healthy, productive adults."

The project's early success is related to finding solutions from within the community to needs in early childhood development, after school care, youth support and development, community strengthening, child and youth sports programmes, child rights and protections, as well as partnership capacity building.

Betty Nkoana is the present Project Manager for the "Thoughtful Path" in Munsieville. As we visited two Early Childhood Development Centers (EDCC), one of the clinics and the homes of members of the community, the love the members have for her was clearly evident.

In the future, leadership will be passed to a younger generation, but the city will be well served, as seen in visits with two of its outstanding young people. Ivy started a successful for-profit EDCC from the bottom up, and Bucs began as a journalist intern but is now the city's lead print and electronic writer.

There are plans to create a sports centre and a community resource centre, all consistent with the goal of giving young people the "opportunity to develop into healthy, productive adults."

I left Munsieville with a new image of "a city upon a hill," a modern-day version of what President-elect Kennedy had in mind as he spoke in Boston in 1961.

See The Thoughtful Path Web site for more information on how you can get involved in supporting this innovative programme.

Youth Voice group sees journalism in action

The Youth Voice Journalism group from Munsieville recently had a site visit to the offices of The Sunday Times and The Sowetan, where they met with the Editor-in-Chief of the Sunday Times and then took a tour around the printing house. The group are already developing their photography and journalism skills and are hoping to use them in future employment with the local press, where they will also be able to give a voice to the young people of Munsieville.
The Youth Journalism Academy was established as a sustainable project for young people to bridge the gap between high school and employment. An initial pilot was organised to teach a small group how to make short films about their lives and write newsletters, to increase their chances of getting a job. Those materials and learnings were used to launch a full ten-month course for 50 students in February, to secure further funding and external support.
A local business helped with a donation to buy cameras, computers and other equipment, while the project has been fully supported by newspapers, TV and radio stations. They send staff in regularly to run sessions or act as mentors for the students and there are also internship opportunities for the Munsieville participants, giving them a chance to experience the world of work and impress outside partners with their talent. One young person from the pilot has already got a job working on Johannesburg’s leading breakfast radio show, while others are project leads on the new course.
See our Web site for more on the sustainable Thoughtful Path programmes we are creating in Munsieville, which use the energy and resources of the community to change young people's lives forever.